


Strandline

by typhe



Category: Valdemar Series - Mercedes Lackey
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dubious Morality, Identity Porn, M/M, Pirates, Secret Identity, Strangers to Lovers, Undercover Missions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-12
Updated: 2017-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-23 22:01:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 42,409
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9680837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/typhe/pseuds/typhe
Summary: AU.  Vanyel and Tantras travel to the eastern edge of Valdemar to investigate the death of a Herald-Mage.  Vanyel goes undercover on the streets, and meets the young underworld fixer whose voice keeps peace in the city.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Content notes:  
> No sex until ch 6.  
> Noncon is a topic that gets touched on in this story but none of it takes place in the fic.  
>   
> Huge thanks to everyone who cheered on this fic on [](http://last-herald-mage.dreamwidth.org/profile)[**last_herald_mage**](http://last-herald-mage.dreamwidth.org/), and also to Kess & Dardrea for their nudging to archive it here. I've made a lot of edits to that version, including removing two OCs and making the geography canon-compliant (ish). On that note, thanks also to Harukami, who wrote a fic that gave me some pointers on how to rejig this to fit into canon. There is a delightful [PODFIC VERSION](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7722769) by Kess that was based on an intermediate edit.

It was far from the first time he'd been inside a prison.

The cells of Mountather were below the fortress, and with his sight attuned to the bright mountain daylight he could barely make out the shape of the walls. The smell of rotten straw assailed him, and he was coughing even before his captor grabbed him by the neck and dragged him struggling and arguing his way down the stone stairs. "It wasn't me," he protested, with some difficulty. "I've never even _been_ there." The only response was an indifferent grunt. In silhouette, he saw the duty watchman salute and unlock the iron door, and he was dragged down the hallway to a tiny cell and dropped on the ground without ceremony. He heard his captor slam the bolt closed and stride away, and he tried to breathe in the mouldy, foetid air. He was too tired - physically and mentally - to do much else. In the cell he had enough room to lie down, but little more; the iron cage was perhaps eight feet by five feet, one of a row of a dozen.

He turned his head, and tried to pick straw from his hair and his threadbare clothing. A little light shone through a tiny, high window, falling on the grey stone beyond the iron-grate door. His sight brightened slowly, until he could see his neighbours in the dismal prison. In the cage to his left, a young man sat on his heels and watched him curiously through the bars. He turned, almost feeling his body creaking; to his right, an older man slouched and smiled darkly at him. "Ne'er been where?" the older man whispered, scratching at a trimmed beard - _too neat for him to have been long inside here, that's for sure._

His neighbour had sounded amused. "Horstine," he muttered. "They swore they had a warrant for a man matching my description in _Horstine._ But on my life, I've never _been_ there."

This was an incredible statement. His cellmates all knew that the only safe road that led east through the mountains to Mountather passed through Horstine, and in truth he had been there before, but not for many years. It was a great stroke of luck that he'd passed through Mountather so long ago, and remembered the keep well enough that he'd been able to find his way back. But no, he hadn't come east by any safe road today.

From elsewhere in the dimly lit jail, he heard a laugh. "Warrant for _what_?"

"I can't imagine what iniquities they would lay at my door," he snapped, indignant, and then paused for effect. "I believe smuggling was mentioned." With his eyes closed, he heard several chuckles through the dark. Smuggling was a petty part of their world. They were thieves, enforcers, hired killers. Just the people he needed to talk to. "I was merely travelling to Cul Aber," he continued mildly.

Iron creaked as the man to his right shifted his weight against the bars between them. "Oh, that so? All kinds of chances there, if you know what you're doing. But if you don't, mind..."

Someone hissed, darkly.

"Sounds like you know it well," he offered respectfully.

"Tsh, Dower know the scale, ain't got a clue what else goes downriver," interrupted a man too distant for him to see clearly.

"Watch yourself, mornsman -"

"Or you'll what? Drown me with tears for yon Polly -"

He heard bars grabbed, shouts, iron rattling futilely. He heard the watchman strike her spearbutt on the floor, and then the man to his left whistled a few tuneless notes and yelled, "Truce, fools."

Close on his left, he heard Dower thump his hand down into the straw. "Arright," and he spat.

When the quiet had gone on long enough, he pulled himself up and rested his back against the wall, trying to see what he could of his companions. He'd hoped that the gaol would be the right place to meet with a few colourful personages of the area and hear a little news. The prisoners were awaiting their hearings before Mountather's magistrate, and wouldn't be lingering much longed than he would, though most were familiar with the cells from previous visits. Four men, one woman, all grimy and scuffed, but with his adjusted sight he noted that some of them dressed quite well; the kinds of things that got you arrested on the roads near Mountather could also bring a handsome living. The three he could easily see were all tattooed with simple symbols, though Dower's was hard to notice; a wavering blue line so high on his neck that his beard largely concealed it. The woman wore her mark proudly on her bare shoulder; a semicircle, the flat side facing down, radial lines coming from it like wheelspokes. _Gang marks?_

He was content to play the fool. "Anything I should watch out for down in Cul Aber?"

"Who you piss off," spat the lone woman, ten feet away from him behind two thickets of iron bars. "And who you don't. These days, I wouldn't mess with the scale less you got another score -"

"Cheth, watch your damned mouth," snapped the man to his left. "He could be anyone. What if he's a songbird?"

 _Songbird - an informant._ The irony didn't escape him, but his face stayed blank. "Who'd bloody bother?" asked Dower. "We ain't shit. Who you think you is, Duchess Poll on the river?"

"You _wish_ I was." The others laughed. "Won't say you're right but if he needs to be told, I ain't sure we should be so good. I not seen him around. He ain't covered by song truce -"

"Horseshit," croaked the man furthest from him - his throat sounded constricted, and his thin, ragged form was still little more than a shape far away. " _Everyone_ gets song truce. That's why it's truce."

There were murmurs of assent to this riddle; its wisdom escaped the newcomer. He was not inclined to admit it. "Is there anywhere, uh, particularly rowdy I ought to, well, beware of?"

Laughter. A game, not least for the benefit of the watchwoman, who was doubtless charged to report any signs of conspiracy among the prisoners. "Well, you know the docks are quiet enough by day this time of year, but they're mighty dangerous at night..." trilled Cheth. "The scale trade upriverways - that's south side of the city." That much he knew - he'd once forded his way over the border, far upriver of Cul Aber. The great river ran north from Karse's mountainous region up to the northern ocean, far beyond the Ice Wall; at Cul Aber, it swept a curve to the east and back, embracing the ancient port city. "The morn stay north of there - we used to live on the river, but Loa's crew goes as we please. But it's not like an _innocent sort_ would have any reason to mix with that kind."

"But of course not - I don't mix with smugglers," he replied stiffly, to more hilarity. "Do many visitors pass over the border?"

He heard Dower spit. "Our way, just runaway slaves. Their way, few traders, mostly the morn and their special friends, sometime." At that, he heard a low chuckle from Cheth. "Course, _this_ time of year it's not so easy. Culway's in a rage with the snow running off. They couldn't pay me enough to take a boat out, not even with Duchess Polly's word on it."

Cheth grunted. "Like she tell aught except what's good for scale."

"Would _you_ set to river if she said you were going down?" Dower asked her smugly.

Cheth didn't reply. He had too little time to consider her words or her silence - he sorely-needed more direction. "Anywhere else I should, ah, avoid, if I don't want to get mixed up with smugglers and miscreants?"

"In Cul Aber? Might find your work cut out," grinned the man to his left. "Especially down by Lighthouse Market, and the old Inn Row. Pinter Square's a mess too."

"It's not even worth it no more," muttered Cheth. "Nary a song now. He used to sing there all the time. Now it's all for truce and coin."

 _Songs. They keep speaking of songs._ He stored the mystery away, as if folding a paper and slipping it in the pockets of his mind. "I didn't catch your name," he asked his neighbour, and extended his fingers absurdly through the bars - the gap was too narrow to admit his whole hand.

"Shossel. Yours?"

He hesitated - _but it's all to the good for this particular reputation._ "I'm Valdir. Pleased to meet you." _Truly, what you've all told me was worth the manhandling, if not the awful smell._

  
  


He'd had enough. He sent a weak mental appeal to Tantras, who appeared within minutes to drag him out again, grunting something about the magistrate and interrogations and his many previous offences while the unfortunate Valdir protested his innocence. Atop the stairs, Tantras kicked the heavy jailhouse door closed with a _thud_.

_And that is the last my new friends will see of poor Valdir. May they assume the worst of his fate._

Vanyel found himself almost blind again, in the full sun in Mountather's castle courtyard. None of the colours made sense - sky, stone, air, a thin palette of blue and grey. His head still felt like the place between Gates, bereft of warmth or energy, thrumming with hurt. He slumped against Tantras, who was gracious enough to support his weight as they walked toward the stables where Yfandes and Delian were being tended. "And I thought you were enjoying a little rest down there," Tran nudged him, and Vanyel glared. The Death Bell had sounded at almost dawn; as soon as the Council had allowed it, he'd Gated them to Mountather, and he'd not taken near as much rest as he needed before paying his visit to the prison. In truth, he should have taken _days_ of rest. It hurt to think of the hours of riding ahead of them before they'd reach Cul Aber. So Tantras knew full well why he was tired. "Hear anything worth hearing?"

"A lot." He shook his weary head. "More importantly, I'm maybe starting to understand their manners. Some of what we know suddenly makes more sense. Remember what Captain Audley said about how little violence there's been between the bandit groups lately? The prisoners were talking about a gang truce. And there _is_ crossborder traffic among at least one of the gangs - but even they don't like it at the best of times, which this is not," and he sighed heavily. "Can you imagine a worse time to be searching along the border?"

"Midwinter. In a war," suggested Tantras optimistically.

"Midwinter, we might have been able to walk across the river. I could have held the ice together under us," he grumbled. Tran's eyes widened with unease at the thought. "So yes, even _smugglers_ are too scared to make the crossing to Hardorn right now because of the spring snowmelt. But they do cross sometimes, which is more than almost anyone else will admit to." The treaty Valdemar had negotiated three years ago allowed for trade, but the ongoing war left Valdemar with few spare resources to trade away. Randale had set steep export tariffs. Little wonder that most of the crossborder trade was in stolen and illegal goods.

Tran shook his head. "How did Harren get _into_ Hardorn?"

"Same way I did ten years ago. It's easy to cross if you go far enough south of here, before the point where the Sijar flows into the Culway from the east. There's many places shallow enough for a Companion to ford across," explained Vanyel. "He headed north from there, and when we spoke yesterday he was in Lydra - that's not five miles from Cul Aber, just over the river and a little uphill." About half of one of those miles were occupied by the vast, treacherous Culway. They'd spent half the morning in Council going over the landscape of Valdemar's eastern edge, and Vanyel had been past frustrated by it long before they'd got there. "If _anyone_ saw Harri reach Valdemar, they're in Cul Aber and from all we've heard I doubt they make their living doing anything savoury."

"So you're going to go pretend you're a scruffy street minstrel," Tantras said sceptically.

"We're running out of time," Vanyel reminded him. "We have to find Harri."

Tantras stopped walking. "Harri's dead."

Vanyel stepped away from him, so tired and frustrated he wanted to scream. "And if we want to know _why_ , we're running out of time to find out," he repeated. Tantras stared at him with a hurt that made Vanyel feel like the bell was still reverberating in his bones. _It's not fair. You didn't feel him die. There's one last thing I can do for him and I have to do it._ "Tran. There aren't enough of us _left_ that we can _afford_ to lose a Herald-Mage and not know how or why. I have to find Harri. I don't have a choice -"

"Don't kill yourself," muttered Tantras, and he resumed his path to the stables.

 _I may need that advice before this journey's through._ For all his pain and fatigue, he couldn't chance to rest until there was nothing left in him. He had days, at most, remaining in which he could cast the spell that would reveal Harri's final moments.

Unlike Tantras, he was beyond the point of thinking of Herald-Mage Harren as a friend and comrade. Harri was now a time-candle, burning at both ends. Harri was one last dispatch in fading ink; if Vanyel could only find where he fell, he could summon the facts of his death, the face of his killer.


	2. Chapter 2

From his sheltered spot at the edge of a cobbled square, Valdir watched the grey city.

His fingers hurt. The bitter wind had ripped his songs away almost as soon as they left his hands, whistling away through the cracks in the stones around him; what few passers turned to hear him soon moved on. But he watched them, playing only songs he knew very well, careful of his energy, careful of his focus. Sometimes he sang, in part for show - that was what had elicited most of the pile of pennies gathered in the old cloth hat on the cobbles before him; rousing, familiar words. Not much coin, and few had lingered to speak to him.

His tiredness had long ago reached that point at which rest was no longer possible. It was as well that he worked best on instinct, because his thoughts were long gone. He looked up from his earnings to the fading sky, to the crowds that were slowly gathering as evening drew in. Some semblance of nightlife beginning; down the square, shutters swung open with a dull clank of rotting wood.

If _any_ life were to come to the area, he was at least hoping someone would try asking him for protection money. Trouble. He badly needed some more trouble.

_:What you need is a rest from this, Van.:_

He shook his head, for all Yfandes couldn't perceive the gesture - she was with Delian in the gatehouse stables, perhaps a mile away from where he leaned on a weathered milestone cradling his old lute in his hands. _:Can't. Unless Tantras has turned up something useful...?:_ She sniffed at him sleepily. Not likely. 

What had he achieved, so far? _No leads._ He had asked a polite older woman for directions to the Lighthouse Market, not finding it on the map they'd examined before leaving Mountather, and she'd answered him with a warding sign. _And not even a dozen pennies._ He'd seen few in this quarter who looked to have anything to spare, and the street-talk all told of a city washed thin by rainstorms and snowmelt. Beyond the old river-wall that protected Cul Aber from floods, the quays were near to submerged and the Culway's seasonal viciousness kept every fisherman and smuggler ashore. He'd seen more than a few of them - drunk, in groups - and heard complaints about many more.

If nothing else, he needed a change - perhaps to explore those allegedly treacherous docks. Surely there'd be enough trouble there to keep him awake. _One more song_ , he decided. _Too early for bawdy, just yet - something romantic._ The stony city would lend itself to a lovelorn ballad, if the wind would allow it to be heard. He struck the first chord, and fleetingly wondered if he should have allowed Tantras to arrest him again - Tran had made that genteel offer when they'd been about a mile outside the city, but Valdir had elected to pass through the gates alone, on foot, and not pursued by the law. He'd hoped that some distance would be of advantage, to both of them. Tantras had set out to make every official investigation into how a man might enter Cul Aber - border records, shipping manifests, and the like. When they'd last spoke, Tantras had already befriended two people who'd offered him bribes, but neither had known aught of the river traffic. Valdir could only hope for better luck with Cul Aber's less genteel criminals.

Surely someone in the city had seen something. Privately, he he doubted they'd tell Tantras; the very definition of secret border crossings was that the Heralds of Valdemar mustn't know of them.

So here he was, singing on the streets in the desperate hope of locating a friend's corpse. 

If he hadn't been focused on being Valdir, his mood would have spun into the city's dismal spiral. The shadow of the fortress now covered half the square; it was a relic now, built when Valdemar was young and still feared the reach of the East. Cul Aber's streets were full of such reminders of what the city had lost. Once, Cul Aber had traded Valdemar's treasures for delicacies from Iftel and Hardorn, and silks and strange herbs from the Eastern Empire. The city felt like an empty shell, arches and colonnades disintegrating into its inner absence. Crack-cobbled streets, crumbling cornices and scarred stone where gargoyles had been long ago ripped out and stolen. It had been a long time since Valdemar had been able to spare much to trade, even with neighbours with whom they shared good terms.

 _But there's always music._ Someone would always stop to hear the music. Odd, too, that he was singing a song from almost as far _west_ as he'd ever been - from the shores of Lake Evendim - and here he was at the eastern edge of Valdemar. _A lovesong becomes a travel-song if you carry it with you._

The wind seemed to quiet. _Now_ his song fit here; its brief and fleeting passions, its willingness to look back at good times and say farewell. Sunset brightened the grey stones to gold, and even the lonely square seemed to have its own regal beauty -

Someone was singing along.

His hands kept moving by memory even as his eyes whipped around the square to find the one man, of all the passers, who was still. 

There. Staring at him, smiling brighter than the last light of evening. He sang on as Valdir's words faltered. _"Should summer winds bear me on, wish me well."_ His voice carried where Valdir's had failed to - high and clear, sounding in the space as if he were perfectly used to it, as if his voice _belonged_ there. Their eyes met, and Valdir felt out the last few chords as if his hands were possessed by that same spirit. 

The man drew close as Valdir drew silent, and leant a hand on the wall behind him; he flicked a silver from his pocket, which landed atop the tiny clutch of coppers in the upturned hat. "While since I heard that song," and his hazel eyes were momentarily as warm as sunlight. "And ne'er so well, I do say. Heard you a street away, heading past Rook's to the Westerly market."

"You sing well yourself," he replied. An understatement. The stranger sang so well that part of him _still_ felt - faraway, locked into the story of the lover that drifted on the four winds as the seasons changed. It was hard to remember who he was - and who he wasn't. What name he wore. How far he was from Evendim - or anywhere. Gods, but that _voice_ \- how did anyone here knew a song of Evendim?

The stranger snorted with odd humour. "Yeah, I can hold a tune. And that's why I ask myself, what's a voice so fine doing out on Pinter Square? Worst pitch in the city. I know from when it was all I could get." He leaned to look Valdir close in the eyes. "You hadn't been here long if you not figured that."

"Was starting to," he answered, nodding at the pennies; barely enough for a meal, much less a room, before the stranger's generosity. What was he to make of this man? He'd thoughtlessly dropped him a silver, but nothing in his manner suggested he was a gentleman. The clothes that clung to his body in the wind were much better than Valdir's, and were styled with the patchwork oddness shared by many of the city's inhabitants; simple woollen breeches and linen tunic of Valdemaran weave, but cut a little longer in the Hardornen style, and with a scarf of foreign silk billowing a dark blue trail behind him. His boots were well-worn. He was thin, but his bright eyes and thick hair - a red that shone in the sunset - made him seem hale. Young and slight though he was, and wearing none of the tattoos that had adorned Valdir's former cellmates, the man had an ease that felt knowing and oddly territorial. _I'm on his old pitch? He belongs here, I don't, and he wants me to know it._

"Here from out west?" the stranger asked. Valdir nodded; he'd learned over the years that it was best to talk as little as possible and, beyond the barebones, to allow enquirers to make as many assumptions about his persona as they wished to. And _everything_ was west of Cul Aber. "How come?" The words were merely curious, but his eyes were piercing. 

He'd seen many people thinking that today; this was the first one to ask. "Just to raise a few pennies before moving on. Maybe you can help me," he inquired shyly. "Do you know how I could get passage to Hardorn?"

The stranger's face went blank, and his eyes were cold, green-flecked stones. "I do," he said after a moment's silence. "But I don't tell stuff like that for nothing. You've got to give me something."

Valdir's face crumpled in barely feigned despair, and he gathered the threadbare cap full of coins in his hands. "I've nought to give, sir, I -"

He was interrupted by a laugh. "I'll tell you if you kiss me."

Valdir's surprise was not feigned at all. _If I_ what _?_ He thought fast - he had weighed worse options quickly in worse circumstances, though he recalled none more strange. _He guessed I'm shaych - or doesn't care?_ The stranger's striking smile revealed nothing. _I don't even know his_ name _. He_ is _attractive - really, very attractive - but I would never -_ he felt himself blushing fiercely. _It doesn't matter what_ I'd _do or not do - I'm desperate and penniless here, remember? If I threw away my first sight of an answer -_

That was the crux of it; he had much to gain and nothing to lose but his dignity, and he was in no place to cling to that too tightly. He set down his cap and his lute at his feet, and he leaned awkwardly forward, closing the gap between them.

He had no idea what he'd expected. Nothing so slow and gentle, for sure. Hands cupped his face, stroking his hair as their mouths moved, a tonguetip no more than teasing at his dry lips. He responded, and when the kiss deepened he closed his eyes without meaning to. _Oh gods, I'm not myself. I don't know you._ He felt lines wavering even as their tongues moved together, the barrier between himself and Valdir slipping. _If you're this good at kissing, I could wish it was me you were really kissing..._

Their faces slid apart. The stranger's eyes took the measure of him in a way that made the hairs on Van's neck stand on end. He felt confused. Valdir had never been kissed before, and it was only now that Vanyel remembered why; because Valdir getting close to someone could not possibly be wise.

 _I had to_ , he told himself. Never mind that it had been an incredible kiss - it was hardly an indulgence on his part. The other man turned on one heel, and he beckoned for Valdir to follow. "I don't even know your name," he called.

The complaint earned him a raised eyebrow and a smirk. "Stefen. Stef, if you fancy. Yours?"

"Valdir," he replied. "Where are you going?"

"I got to show you something. I just tells you, you won't get it. Follow me." Stefen strode away without another word, and Valdir rushed to pocket his coins and sling his battered lute on his back, stumbling after with his cap clutched against his head in the wind. Stefen was singing again, more softly but still seeming to fill the whole world with the melody - contained as this slipshod world was by rickety walls and shuttered windows, slates and stones.

The sound distracted him as he tried to memorize their route; past street-merchants packing their last wares, through alleys so thin he could easily have reached out to touch both sides, the last light of day allowing them to pick their route around lost flagstones and rubbish, although something told him that Stefen would have been just as surefooted in total darkness. Van slipped a hand to his lips, which still seemed to tingle with the force and fascination of the unexpected - a kiss as daring and breathtaking as that voice. Only Valdir could have felt this. Stefen would never have sung to _Vanyel_ \- much less kissed him.

 _And I haven't been kissed like that in years. Why me? He's beautiful, he walks like he owns this town, and if that kiss was any indication... He could have anyone he wanted. And he swears he knows how to get to Hardorn. Who_ is _he?_

The thought had been purely rhetorical, but he felt Yfandes' thoughts rumbling about his own. _:Van,:_ she cautioned. _:Are you sure you should be following this man? What if he's just looking to take advantage of you?:_

That hadn't really crossed Vanyel's mind; was he being too trusting? But her worries didn't make a lot of sense. _:He knows I've nothing worth taking. And really, if he meant to take advantage of me, he would have asked me to -:_ He diverted the thought out of an approaching gutter. _:- For something more than just a kiss, sweetheart.:_ He was surprised _not_ to feel a little revulsion at the thought - shouldn't he?

 _:You have a point. I'm trying to look at it from his point of view? He meets a penniless singer far from his home and alone on the street. Perhaps he's not taking advantage of you, but taking pity on you. Really, Chosen,:_ she continued before he could frame his scepticism. _:Suppose you were a girl who'd fallen on hard luck - bargaining for your virtue would be indecent, but a kiss seems like an innocent enough request. Which suggests this Stefen is a decent sort - or that he likes to think of himself as such.:_

Vanyel was content to pretend he'd reasoned his way to the same conclusion. But the song's lonely refrain was tugging at him, making him feel that fleeting kiss all over again. _:Fandes,:_ he nudged her. _:Do you hear that?:_

_:That one's from over by Evendim, no? I've heard you sing it before.:_

_:It was_ how _he's singing it that I was noticing. Am I wrong?:_

_:That's - oh, hells, Van.:_

The young man had the Bardic gift, and he was leading Valdir through the slums of Cul Aber. _:So I have to follow him,:_ he explained, touching his lips again.

  
  


It was almost dark when they reached the Culway. The city curled itself against the inside the great river-wall, with the road rising a slope to meet its lip. From atop the wall, he saw a maze of jetties and moorings dotted along river, and from what light lingered, he saw water run clear over the lowest of the quays. There were no nightwatchmen near, no torches - who would need to be down near the docks at night? Judging from the movements in the shadows, they were far from alone. He kept close to Stefen, less wary of the devil whose name he knew.

Below the wall, beams of cloudy light shone from the bottle windows of long barges; he heard raucous voices from inside, not all of them Valdemaran. Foreign traders that the spring tide had washed up in Cul Aber? He almost tripped as his foot caught in a knothole on the wooden dock. _Gods, for a magelight. And a few more answers than questions._ Stefen had stopped singing; he led Valdir down creaking steps to the water; they were slippery and soft, and at every step he expected them to give way beneath him.

"Is tricker than usual, but still my favourite way. There's a few ways there," explained Stefen. "Here, you're going to get your feet wet," and Valdir heard a splash as he stepped down onto a landing that was evidently a few inches below the water line. The river was loud here, and it was as hard to hear Stefen's words as it was to see his gestures in the dark. "See that?" Ahead of them was a thick stone ledge at the base of the wall. Like a step, or an extra layer long forgotten since its making. Stefen stepped up onto it, and extended his arm back to Valdir. "Just round corner," he indicated ahead of them. "It's not so bad. But watch your feet." Valdir grasped Stefen's cold, thin fingers, and gingerly joined him.

Not so bad, indeed. But the sound of the river belting northward, swollen to its natural limits, was battering his senses as Stefen set off along the ledge. Valdir followed with his back to the wall; the ledge was all of a foot wide and led to who knew what, and Stefen was striding ahead of him with accustomed ease. _It's a path a child would make_ , and he remembered another life, another time, where he'd taken much more precarious routes to get to where he wanted to be. _How old is Stefen, anyway?_ That first moment their eyes met still wrapped at his mind like a warm cloak - a youthful voice and old, familiar eyes -

As they rounded the curve of the river, he saw a red gleam on the water. He thought he heard a hum of voices in the air.

Ahead, the shadows widened into improvised cousins of architecture - an uneven bank of stones reaching into the river. The wall behind was an abrupt, dark hollow. "Welcome to the Lighthouse Market," said Stefen, and he led Valdir toward the throng of people.

  
  


_Paydirt._ He watched from inside the hollow mask of Valdir, and sensed the hunt closing in. _If anyone knows, they'll be here._ He felt his intention hanging inside his mind like a spelltrap, concealed behind the mask of Valdir.

He stepped onto a wide bank made of mis-set stones held together by dubious cement, bare inches above the water; unfamiliar smoke-scents assailed him, as if he'd had any doubt of the market's trade. Or trades; under the red lanterns that hung over the breach in the wall, some quite interestingly-dressed women were braving the cold - and a few men, who he would generally have found more interesting yet. He saw swathes of tattoos on their bare skin; art, gang-sigils, sometimes Hardornen script that he couldn't interpret. The lanterns wove a path deeper into the breach - deeper than reason would have allowed. Smuggler's paths under the city? Natural caves? He didn't know. Stefen was weaving through the crowd ahead of him. Everything around them was firelight and shadow; people huddled over low fires by the water, and the air filled with the smoke of roasting fish and stranger-smelling goods.

Stefen reached back to grab Valdir's hand as he ducked into the hollow of the torn wall - a girl gave them a wink, but he noted that she didn't spare them the solicitation she bestowed upon every other male passer. Nor did the others - Stefen was known to be disinterested in the girls, then. Valdir stooped through the tunnel; there was stone underfoot, and to their right they passed deeper hollows, thinly curtained recesses full of smoke and bodies, trails of lanternlight that reached who knew how far deeper - _it's like a maze between the city and the river._ People slipped past them, never looking at their faces. Stefen, he noted, held a fold of his scarf over his face. Valdir's feet slipped, and he stumbled into his companion, a little dizzy.

Stefen shrugged off his apology and wrapped his free hand around Valdir's waist, keeping him close. He spoke near to Valdir's ear, words muffled by the cloth over his mouth. "Smell that? They're smoking dreamerie. I try not to breathe too deep down here." The tunnel led unexpectedly back out into the night, onto a second spit of roughly cemented stones the like of the first, and Stefen drew deep breaths of fresh air and then cupped his hands to his lips. "Polly!"

From somewhere in the crowd - huddled groups of sellers, smokers, dancers, couples sat at the water's edge, or curled together against the river-wall - a woman slipped through. "You're lucky I ain't too busy - what you got for me?" She was tall, about Valdir's height, and probably a little older than him; her hair, held back by glassy strands of beads, was streaked through with hennaed stripes that greyed out near the crown of her head. A tattoo graced her neck - a fishtail, arcing into a jagged line of water. He'd seen many similar marks around them; he knew them now for imitators.

"Just here to catch the tide," Stefen answered, and she snorted.

"Not tonight you don't. Worse than it's been all week. Less you want to drown out there, I'd leave it til," and she licked a finger lasciviously and held it aloft. "Two more nights, maybe. Unless your friend want to take a dip in the river?" she asked, looking blandly over Valdir.

"Sh, you never been serenaded out on the water?" Stefen winked at her.

"On a night like this? Only Death himself would make so bold." She leaned closer to Stefen. " You watch yourself out there - I got nought coming in, and we all got folks getting belligerent. Silona's holed up tight, but his thugs is getting hungry and I heard that girl of his is twitching for trouble. You mind your step downriver." 

She barely tried to hide her whispers, and Valdir had the sense that she wanted her portents to be spread around. Stef nodded once, and she pressed back through the crowd with her long silk skirts trailing after her.

"Good thing for you that she owes me," Stefen whispered. "No one knows the river like Polly. I seen a lot of fools thought they ruled the river who drowned one by one while she sat on the riverbank nodding her head and going 'I told you so.' She scrapes an edge off every coin gets changed on the whole riverside, without raising a knife - not that she wouldn't. But do you see now? How she brings hers home?"

Vanyel looked around at the fires and the lanterns in renewed comprehension. But of course. Any city guard that looked down from above would see only the red lanternlight, and if they knew the way they might stray down to breathe a little illicit air and negotiate a price for their silence - cash, goods, companionship, they would think themselves bought, and no more of it. But should a boat set sail in the night from the far, foreign side of the river, the Lighthouse Market would be there to shine the way home.

If Harri had left Hardorn by night, he must have seen it.


	3. Chapter 3

At the river's edge, he watched Stefen barter with an old man sat over a fire, haggling fast and in a cant too obscure for the trade to be comprehensible. Eventually Stefen handed the man a few coins and a large handkerchief, and as the withered man reached his weathered fingers to the fire and pulled out two blackened fish by their tails, Stefen clasped hands behind his back and sang. Valdir had never heard the song before, but from its cadence he knew it for a lullaby. The crowd hushed around them, and he could feel Stefen's gift rippling through the air - the sound, the energy behind it, was such a gentle balm on the senses that Valdir almost fell asleep on his feet. _Gods, if I could._ But there was an odd flavour to the energy that Vanyel, for all the times he'd heard the songs of the Bards of Haven, couldn't place. He dimmed his eyes and invoked his Othersenses, trying to assess the peculiar feel of Stefen's power. _:Fandes?:_

 _:I'm watching. He's certainly Gifted - how many people is he touching, in that crowd?:_ She sounded a little incredulous.

 _:More than thirty?:_ Stefen shone with a deep, intoxicating red in Vanyel's inner vision; red shot through with an unfamiliar tone. _:But isn't there more to it than that?:_

He caught an oddly human sense of her eyebrows raising, and then directed her attention to the centre of the energy's focus; the space between Stefen and the old cook. Stef's eyes were unfocused, and the man smiled in pure serenity, stretching his feet out into the river as if his frail body felt momentarily eager to stretch and to move. _:Yes - that's_ something _else. Healing - no, closer to mindhealing, I'd say.:_

 _:Some kind of manipulation?:_ and he turned his gift of Empathy more closely to Stefen's subject. He felt only physical relief - nothing to indicate that Stefen was weaving any deception in the old man's mind. _:Whatever it is, he wasn't doing it earlier, and I've never seen anything like it.:_ The song rang bright in his ears and his Othersenses, the power so odd he couldn't perceive it as having its own colour - a sheen at the edge of the spectrum. _:If you believe the Gifts we find are the ones we need...:_ he wondered.

_:Hell of a thing to stumble over by coincidence in the middle of something more important. We had our hands full of trouble as it is.:_

He nodded, and for a few seconds he closed his eyes and let himself go. Let the music have him, slow notes promising him dreams and rest and comfort, warming him against the cold riverside wind. When the sound ceased, he was almost surprised to still be there - with cracked stone under his old shoes, aches in his spine, hunger in his belly - everything the music had spared him of. _No wonder he seems to do well with these sorts. A Gifted Bard selling ditties at a black market? That's incredible._

Stefen trod back to Valdir holding the handkerchief by its corners; oil dripped through the cloth. "Song's part the price," he explained quietly. "Makes him feel good for a moment, and all who come here thinks that's worth something - I never put down much coin for aught. I won't let a good street-singer go hungry," he added, oddly fierce.

Valdir looked to him with genuine gratitude, and more than a little guilt. _You traded your Gift so_ I _could eat?_ "I can't thank you enough," he replied.

  
  


They ate at the edge of the spit of stone, so close to the water that the wind whipped water over his old boots. Stefen explained the history of the strange place between mouthfuls. "Wasn't even on purpose, the way Poll told it. Back in the day she lived in a cellar with her brother and sisters and their babes - did this and that to get them by while the walls was crumbling around them. Landlord never did squit for them. Then one cold springtime a wall cracked right open and that's how she found out they lived by a damn _cave_. Nothing but air between their cellar and the river-wall. She's no fool; figured she'd clean out the mud and lease it out to the smugglers, but then she finds that the river-wall had cracked open too." He shook his head. "Polly were right there, water up her boots and seeing daylight both ways and a hole in the wall big enough to shimmy through if you fancied a swim, and knows the rest of Cul Aber might kill for this - a way around the law _and_ the gangs. First she just hangs up a lantern, and watches, and waits. She's changed the lay of things a bit since," he noted. "I don't mean just tossing stones in the river or taking her cut here and there, either. She's making something of it, before we all gets washed away."

Valdir tried to comb through the tangled story for what he needed of it. "So people who, ah, prefer not to declare their cargoes started following her lanterns and landing here?"

Stefen laughed. "Always used to land somewhere, didn't they? This game's new, though. Don't have to pay the bordermen or the Morn." Having heard that name enough, Valdir had settled on capitalising it in his mind. "But Poll kept hers safe on nights like this one - any time the river's been rough. She made something from nothing, drove out a lot of reckless little kings. There's a balance, here," Stef noted thoughtfully. "You go with it, or you sticks your finger on it."

Valdir's eyes swept over the river, weaving between the reflected lights. He felt that the city was made of water, wind and words; its crumbling stones only a crucible in which its true essence stirred. "And you did the latter?" Valdir asked, curious of Stef's reasoning in spite of himself.

"Always done what I could. Sometimes you ain't got a choice." He glanced around at the press of people. "You looking to buy aught else here? Because I'm inclined to take off for the night."

He was torn. He could shake Stefen off and try working the crowd - or follow his only certain source, who, doubtless, knew more than he had yet said. _And if I had time to think beyond the next few days, I wouldn't want to lose sight of him._ Fandes was right; it was too much of a coincidence that his path had been crossed by this strongly, mysteriously Gifted young man, and all he had seen thus far of Stefen's life was trouble waiting to happen. "Take off where?" he asked.

This was delicate. Being so forward with him was a necessity, but he couldn't lead the young man on - _should I have thought of that before I kissed him?_ Stefen knew how low his resources were, and was treating him as he was; little more than a beggar. His eyes cast over Valdir thoughtfully. "Well, meant to ask where you were going to kip tonight - you feel like sleeping on the docks and getting robbed of the naught in your pockets?" Valdir allowed himself a worried look - he had considered trying to find a room, however seedy. A night at a flophouse might be of use to him. "I got a hearth of my own, you know?" offered Stefen.

"The price?" he asked warily.

"You knew there'd be one. Nothing steep, mind," and his smirk vanished, leaving him looking almost hesitant. "Would you show me how to use that lute of yours? I always wanted to know how."

He thought fast. What was he risking now? Other opportunities, for sure - but only ones he lacked the energy to advantage of, and turning his back on Stefen would feel much riskier. If he took the offer, would he be safe? There was a toughness to the young man that belied his lithe figure. But he couldn't read anything threatening in Stefen's intentions; rather, Stefen throbbed with an overwhelming curiosity. _That_ was dangerous to Valdir; but he had just as much need to pry information from Stefen, and he'd found that a few coy details from his cover story often won him far more in kind. _I have to chance this_ , he realised for the second time, and nodded in assent.

  
  


Stefen led them back into the den within the wall; inside, they walked gradually upwards through the peculiar tunnelled confines of Polly's hideout. It was a strange mix of the natural and artificial; smooth, cold stones near the water, rough-cut mineshafts and brickwork cellars as they crept further inland. The whole complex seemed too huge and elaborate to match the simple story Stef had told him. Valdir wondered about long-ago smuggler clans or ancient, secret defences. Every cranny of the caverns were put to use - full of people and heady scents of smoke and sweat and lantern oil. And noise. Mostly voices. A rattle of rolling dice, a drum and a pipe playing a drunken rhythm somewhere - music so poor it pained him to hear it with the memory of Stefen's song still ringing in his ears. There were curtained alcoves, cloth rippling suggestively as they passed. It became clear why Stefen had not come to the Lighthouse Market by this route; each reveller they passed had a greeting or a question or an offer that Stefen could not _possibly_ refuse, though he nevertheless did. Did he want to trade for half an ounce of - no, he did not. Were the gamblers from Rethwallen still stuck at the dock? Had he heard what the Morn had done? Who sold the best hempleaf in Northgate? "Gudvar, at the corner where the Row meets North Square," he assured the questioner, and muttered to Valdir as they continued, "The fuck I know? Gudvar pays me to say that."

When they finally emerged from the subterranean den, forcing their way past others headed inside, the sky was far darker than it had been by the shore. Lamplight blotted out the stars. Valdir pulled his worn cloak around himself, and Stefen looked at him with an odd pity. "Must be cold out on the road."

"Colder here," Valdir assured him. It was probably true. The river channelled the wind into a cruelty. "You've not been out on the road so much?"

"Never," Stefen replied, turning away from him.

"Not even to Mountather?"

Stefen snorted. "Cul Aber born, bred, like as not dead, I'm telling you," and walked off uphill as Valdir pondered his disdain, whistling a song as he went. The melody caught his attention, but he couldn't place it. He _knew_ it, though was sure he'd never played it -

_Oh, gods._

The sensation of wanting to sink down into the cracks in the cobbles was, at least, familiar. _It's the Demonsbane song._ He was frozen to the spot, shaken - and then fearful - _does he know_ \- but spent as he was, his habitual response soon took over. He was unfortunately used to stumbling into the myth of himself in public. _It's just a well-known, well-liked song that I happen to despise. Nothing to worry about. It's not about_ me _, it's just what someone wants me to be. Everyone. Thank the gods I'm merely poor, vagrant Valdir and I don't have to put up with such nonsense from anyone._

It was hard to blot out the sound when he was this tired. His mind sought other touchstones even as he hurried on Stefen's heels into the core of the city - _Tantras. Need to talk to Tantras._ Given what had become of Harri, he wanted to exchange what he'd learned as soon as possible.

_:What's the matter, Van?:_

_Focus_ , he told himself. On something other than the trilled notes coming from Stefen's lips. _:I found Polly - the Scale's leader.:_

 _:What? How?:_ Vanyel filled him in on everything ( _almost everything_ ) that had transpired since he met Stefen. _:That was fast. Guess you picked the right person to show you around town.:_

 _:Seems so. The so-called Duchess isn't trying to hide, though.:_ He explained the illicit market clinging to the riverside, the bright signal it shone to the traders from across-river. And how she'd painted the sign of the scale proudly on her throat. How she'd warned him against daring the river. None of it was expected. From the ramblings of his cellmates in Mountather, Vanyel had envisaged a gang queen hidden away in some slum fortress surrounded by poison traps, heavies and hangers-on - definitely not the merry hostess of a beach party. _:Everyone seems to believe in her power to know the Culway's moods, but how she does it, I'm not yet sure. She was quite disarming,:_ he realised. Free with her advice and her favour. Yet he was willing to bet that chance had brought others less pleasant introductions to the Duchess of the Scale. _:What have you turned up?:_ he asked. Tantras responded with an incoherent blast of annoyance. _:The city guard aren't thrilled to have a Herald in their fiefdom, then?:_

 _:Indeed not,:_ Tran replied mock-cheerfully. _:Almost as if they had a multitude of sins to hide. The port-master's book was interesting, if you find acres of mysteriously blank pages interesting.:_ He sighed. For all he'd doubted Tantras's methods - as much as Tantras had doubted his - it would have been a huge relief if he'd found _something_ \- some record of Harri setting foot back in Valdemar, somehow. _:I need to talk to the nightwatchmen alone - no one wrote anything down, but that doesn't mean that no one saw any ships make the crossing in the dark.:_

Clutching at thin straws. They both were. Because they had no time and nothing else to hang on to. 

_:So where is he taking you now?:_ Tran asked, and Vanyel let his attention drift outward again, looking for an answer to that question in the narrow streets around them. On the breeze he smelt coal-smoke, stale beer, cooking fat. They weren't alone, but these weren't like the night folk of the market. Better dressed, occasionally sober. But he sensed they were decaying all the same, though not yet at that tumbledown point where light shone through their cracks. Stefen had fallen silent, and moved with a tangible alertness. _He's listening to the city too._ Hearing raucousness from the main streets that Valdir sensed he was avoiding; thin beats of other people's music.

They stopped at what seemed like a midpoint between city and slum, and Stefen pulled a long key from his pocket. It opened a door at the corner of an unremarkable building of pale stone and cracked plaster; Stefen waved him inside. Valdir sagged against the wall of the inner hallway; it was a relief to have a closed door between himself and the cold wind.

The house creaked around them in the gale. "Welcome to my home," Stef announced, with a little swagger to his voice, a little pity. To the vagrant Valdir, he had a lot to offer. The doorway was so low that the beam had brushed the top of Valdir's head. Inside, it was almost completely black; a flicker of light swam intermittently through a high, bottle-glass window. He heard Stefen fumble with a tinderbox, and the small room brightened.

He set down his lute and his tiny pack on the ground, and looked around curiously. Small though it was, the room was well-kept. Rather than rushes, a woven rug covered the floor; it had worn thin by the doorway. Furnishings were few - a simple bed under the window with a mattress and a blanket, a not-quite-level table, two chairs, a small chest. A pantry nook cut out of the far wall, and a back door that perhaps led to an outdoor privy. A shelf with a few earthenware plates and mugs; one of the latter contained a wooden shepherd's pipe. An upturned bowl on the table - perhaps a stash of bread and butter underneath. No signs of vermin. In many ways, Stef's home seemed quite normal for a city man who lived in a single room, but the rug seemed out of place, and stranger yet, a few panels of bright silk hung from the walls. Stefen knelt at the promised hearth, building a fire from a stock of split logs. _He lives well alone._ Simply, but cleanly and with an obvious pride in what he had. _I've a feeling it's more than he's used to having._

Stefen crossed the room to place his candle on the table, and he waved Valdir into one of of his plain wooden chairs. "Take a seat." He seemed more reserved than he'd been in the streets outside, and Valdir approached him hesitantly. "I don't take much company here," Stef said. "So it's not much for entertaining - don't seem like you mind, though. Weren't scared of the thought of roughing it, was you?" He tilted his head, inquisitive. "And I know you not made as street-sort. Was you a soldier?"

Good idea - _take it_. "Yes - a few years ago, on the Karsite border," he replied.

"Old soldier," Stefen nodded. "I met a few of those out there, back in the day. Most of them got on the streets with a habit though, not a bloody lute."

The words dug sharp into his thin cover, scratching for details Vanyel had never so much as thought of. "I'm not most of them," he defended himself.

"You're not, are you?" He felt his lie encircled by Stefen's quick mind - Valdir had rarely been looked at so closely. Valdir was only ever an observer, a passing balladeer, not a _person_. "You're trouble, is what. Fairly screaming it. Down on your luck, I get, but you're not here but a moment and you're up for trading skin for - naught but more trouble, is what. I promise you a few damn _words_ and you kissed me like your life hung on it?"

It had been a test, he suddenly realised. Or had become a test. And he'd conspicuously failed. 

"I don't get it," Stefen continued, shaking his head. "I _know_ you don't got a habit - if you did, that's what you'd have asked me for. And you looked at me like you never even _thought_ about touching up strangers to get what you wanted before. I don't get you. You want to get to Hardorn? Why in hells?"

Vanyel pressed his lips together hard. His disguise felt flimsy and threadbare, too revealing. He was in need of a patch of truth. "If you must know, I've lost someone. He was in Hardorn, but he said he'd meet me in Cul Aber." Far away, he felt Yfandes startle at his sudden descent into veracity. "I have to find him -"

"He's dead." The words were flat. Dismissive. Final. There was an odd respect in Stefen's eyes as he shook his head. "You won't see him again." _I know_ , Van acknowledged to himself, letting the truth harden his resolve. "Your lover?" he speculated.

"No," Valdir replied quickly. "Just a friend." _Just a spy who was killed on his way home._

Stefen shook his head. "I wouldn't let no friend go to Hardorn." He snapped his fingers thoughtfully. "How were you meant to find him?"

He thought fast. "He told me he'd be in Cul Aber by the last full moon of winter, and he'd leave a message for me at the post house at the west gate -"

"Three nights past," Stefen frowned.

"I was waiting out the storm in Mountather," Valdir explained. "He left no word for me," and his voice shook with entirely real fear and despair. _Oh gods, Harri, what happened to you?_ How could a Herald-Mage be lost without sign or trace? The thought was like scrambling over ice in the dark.

Stefen sighed, and rested an elbow on the tabletop, face resting in his own hand and eyes searching Valdir in a way he found unsettling. _How far through me are you seeing?_ Stefen tapped his fingers against his own face in agitation. "You're not giving this up, are you? Not even damn tired and broke on the streets. For a friend like you," he wondered.

_You'd understand, if you'd ever sent someone to his death._

"I owe you," he recalled, seeking distraction. "You wanted to see my lute?" 

It was as if the candle-flame merged with Stefen's eyes; he straightened in his chair so fast that it creaked loudly. "If you would." The offer was clearly enough to make all else secondary - so he hoped - He sensed his own shadow at the back of Stefen's wide eyes _(you're trouble)_ and shrugged it off as he reached for his instrument case.

He fumbled with the closures, surprised at how steady his hands were. "I'm not much of a teacher," he apologised, and Stefen turned his seat to make for more elbow room - _almost giddy_ , he thought. What a strange young man. But he had once been as desperate to make sound with his hands - _and I'm not a Gifted Bard_. He handed his lute to Stefen with a thread of trepidation; it wasn't worth much, but was rather vital to keeping his cover. Stefen held it reverently, stroking the old wood with his fingertips. "Here -" and he stood behind Stefen and took his hands, arranging them on the strings. "Each string's tuned to a different note - try them, one at a time."

Stefen's fingers moved clumsily, slowly picking out strings between his forefinger and thumb. Then again, a little faster. His action was very far from correct, but the air between them rang with the sheer _joy_ of the sound. _I never thought about what Breda must go through, teaching Gifted apprentices. No skill, but so much desire for it infusing every sound they make - I would hate to hear a Gifted child becoming frustrated with their craft..._ Stefen's movements were taking on an awkward confidence, and he explored further up the instrument's neck. "What does my other hand do?" he asked.

"Look -" and Valdir placed his own hand a few inches down the instrument's battered neck. It wasn't the best tool for this; loops of gut were fraying off the fretboard. _I'm dishonouring that Gift he doesn't know he has._ "If you hold the string against the wood here, and then strike it -"

Stefen plucked, and his eyes went wide at the higher sound. His upper hand brushed against Valdir's as he squeezed his grip down on the string, and the note he felt out rang clear, and full of the wonder of discovery.

That intoxicating wonder.

He held the back of Stefen's chair, suppressing a shiver. _Gods, this is strange. I've heard of all kinds of protocols for teaching Mage-Gifted younglings safely, but nothing about Bards. I guess most of them learn to play instruments before they come into their Gifts so fully...? This man lives off his Gift, uses it without thinking of it. Without understanding it. Without even_ naming _it. And he's so good at putting it into even the clumsiest sound._

The sound died away, and Stefen flexed his hand. Vanyel tried to pull his tired mind back to the present. "You're holding too tight," he chided. "Relax a little. You'd be surprised how little force it takes." Stefen looked up at him, and raised his eyebrow as if he'd said something funny. "Here," and he put his hand over Stefen's thin, paper-dry fingers, surprisingly warm now; he guided them down the frets. "Try here," he instructed, and Stefen seemed delighted by the higher sound made as he squeezed on the string. He shook his finger, and Valdir's nerves quivered in sympathy with the vibration buzz working its way through his flesh. Stefen smiled at him, dazzlingly, and Valdir was struck once again by his beauty. _Oh stars, as if I don't have enough troubles..._

"So if I were to..." and Stefen played the note again, and sang the same tone softly as it rang out. He raised his hand up to the next disintegrating fret, held the note. It rang poor, and he frowned, adjusting his positioning. Then higher, feeling his way up a scale, singing each note as he tried to feel it out. Valdir slumped slowly back into his seat, watching Stefen explore. _Perfect pitch. And such an instinct for how sound works._ Technique could be learned - could be, and his heart sank thinking about what resources that required. _Resources you just don't find in the gutter, and can't trade for at a black market._

Stefen's hands paused. However curious, there was only so much one could do after touching an instrument for the first time. He began feeling around the frets, looking for the right note. He found it, let it ring out, and sang, _"Along a road in Hardorn -"_

"Ah, as far as songs go you might want to start with something else," he interjected hastily. "Something a little - simpler." Stefen pursed his lips, and Vanyel tried to think of somewhere, anywhere, else it would be possible to begin. "Would you know the Tandere Cycle? The fourth part is a decent starting point." Stefen frowned, and Valdir sang him the first line.

"Oh - that one. Never knew it was called that. Learned it years ago, from a minstrel came up from the south. Any minstrel come by, I learn their songs."

Valdir stood behind him again, taking the lute in his hands and feeling out the simple fingering. "It starts here," and he played the first note. "Then down two frets - that's the name for the raised marks," he instructed. "And repeat those two notes again."

It was slow going to get through that first verse. There was so much he never realised he was doing when he played - so many movements he hadn't consciously thought about in years. It had been eight years since he'd even tried to teach music, and Medren had soon moved on to much finer tutors. Stefen played the first line again, singing as he went and Valdir felt the mood behind it shifting - from trepidation, to confidence - and neither the dull sound of the old lute nor Stefen's inexperience could dampen the radiant joy he was projecting in the sound. _What an extraordinary Gift._ Even with precious time slipping by, Vanyel could not help but feel a tired delight in being near him.

Which was frightening. _So deft, even I wouldn't feel manipulated if I didn't_ know _he was doing it._

"You're ready to drop," Stefen observed, turning to look up at him. Valdir couldn't deny it. Stefen lifted the lute from his lap and handed it back - reverent still, but with a glimmer of faith in his expression, as if he looked upon a god and had received its sonorous blessing. He rose to his feet beside Valdir, and for an unsteady moment, Valdir was sure Stefen was going to touch him. He should have shrunk from the thought - _I can't let him test and touch this false person I am_ \- but he didn't. Rather, it was Stefen who stepped back from him, and it was as if a shutter closed on whatever light had been in his eyes. "That hearth of mine should be pretty warm about now," he noted. "I got another blanket -"

"There's one on my pack," Valdir gestured, wary as usual of trusting in someone else's cleanliness, however neat Stefen's quarters appeared. It would not be a comfortable sleeping place, but he was so tired he doubted he'd notice. He retrieved the thin roll of woolcloth - borrowed from a stablehand in Haven - and tucked his lute in its battered case - which, at least, was his own, and had seen enough battles to render it helpfully scratched and battered. He turned in his crouch, and found Stefen watching him, his expression hard to read in the dim light. "I owe you so much thanks," Valdir told him.

Stefen's eyes narrowed, with something more complicated than pity. "But you're still headed east, right?" he glowered. _I don't have a choice -_ "Your friend's dead. You could be alive here, or dead o'er there, and maybe that's not much odds to you but I wouldn't be so keen to find out the difference. What you even do here til the wind changes her temper?"

"Keep singing," he answered hopelessly. "What else could I do?" He was staring into troubled waters, and he recklessly threw in another hooked line. "I was wondering about trying to find people who'd crossed the river lately - maybe see if they'd seen my friend."

"You think to get _rivermen_ talking? To someone who ain't in with anyone?" he sniffed. "Was hard enough to get them talking to each other." Stefen's words seemed wavering - puzzling, not defeated, thoughtful like a chess-player or military tactician - and Vanyel allowed a little real, desperate pleading to enter his countenance.

_I have to find Harri._

Stefen sighed thoughtfully. "You don't know the city. I could guess who been over lately, where to find them - better than anyone. No one knows folk on all sides but me. Though it's not like knowing them's the same as them telling me aught." He shook his head. "Rest up a while. Morrow come, we'll see who I can turn up. I ain't promising anyone will tell you shit," he cautioned. "But I know who to ask."

His chair scraped over the ground, and he snuffed the candle abruptly, leaving Valdir in the dark by the smouldering fire. "Thank you," he said again -

"I'm not one for favours," warned Stefen. 

Dim shadows roamed the walls, outlined in red. His breath caught as he thought of being kissed again. On his back by a warm hearth, in a stranger's home.

He heard the telltale scratch of straw as Stefen settled down on his mattress to rest. "You keep teaching me stuff and I'd call it square."

Vanyel shook himself. _Why was I even thinking of it?_ He'd vowed in the past that Valdir would not to make his way by flirtation and false overtures, which made Stefen's tests and games rankle all the more. "Not sure how well I can help in just a few days," he replied, a little bitter. He wrapped his blanket all about him as he settled on the rug near the hearth. "For what it's worth, I think you've a knack for it."

"Hope so." Stefen's voice had become the horizontal murmur he knew from years past - candles out, young people sharing secrets in the dark. _Sometimes more than secrets._ "I think of songs a lot, just sing them to myself. Would be good to play them. I do well here, from knowing people, singing the right thing in the right ear. Always wonder, though - when the river finally washes us all away, what do I do then?"

 _When._ "Something I - learned in the war," Vanyel murmured - it was hard to hide who he was, in the dark, even from himself. "The storm you're waiting for often doesn't come. It hangs on the horizon while you ache for it to break over you. You know the waiting won't last forever - the watchtower won't stand forever, the enemy can't hold their line forever - but even if you're watching it all collapse one piece at a time, it might still be there longer than you are. The oak tree that will have to come down one day can still outlive you. It probably will."

He knew, in the quiet, that Stefen was thinking on it. _Nihilism was never the point, was it? Take it away, and then where do you go?_ "What if I got out of here before it came?" Stefen muttered. "I can't carry what I got here on the road - I'm not anyone without who I know about Cul Aber. If I were to learn to play, maybe I could go as I like. Worked for you, right?"

 _Misleading you just by being here_ , and he cursed himself silently. No point telling him the realities of life as an itinerant minstrel - not to someone who'd probably known worse. It would be impossible to convince a man like Stefen that the hardship wasn't worth it. "Cul Aber born, bred -?" Valdir reminded him of his words.

"I don't know, alright," retorted Stefen stonily. "Maybe there's only so long I can keep this dance going. Didn't always have a nice gaff like this - or any gaff. Truce is only reason I ever made shit - anyone breaks truce, and I'm singing on the streets and sleeping on my pitch again."

 _You lived on the streets?_ The thought made his heart lurch - and he felt, instinctively, for signs of manipulation. _Does it matter if he's tugging my strings? He's not lying._ The thought of Gifted children - _any_ children - sleeping on Valdemar's streets _ought_ to make him feel sick. _What have I ever fought for?_

But Valdir couldn't entertain such thoughts. He could only sympathise in silence.

Valdir closed his eyes. Deep inside, Vanyel's awareness remained extended - setting shields and alarums, performing all the usual checks he went through before falling asleep in a strange place. With the last of his energy he reached out to find Yfandes, not wanting to sleep without her knowing exactly where he was.

 _:Quite a rabbit-hole you've gone down,:_ she commented. She sounded disapproving and disillusioned, as if to say, _and why not? What else were you to do but dally with a peculiar singer?_

 _:If he can introduce me to the river-smugglers, it'll be worth it.:_ He wriggled on the hard floor, futilely trying to get comfortable. _:Though I think it would be worth it in any case,:_ he continued. _:It seems a crime to me that he's not a Bardic apprentice. That's talent that ought to be in Valdemar's employ, and he's washed up hundreds of miles from Haven without a chance.:_

 _:Bards aren't like Heralds,:_ Yfandes echoed his thoughts. _:No one went on search for him.:_

 _:We just expected him to show up in Haven one day? From the streets of Cul Aber? Are we really that foolish?:_ he snapped, frustrated. _:It's not like we don't take the Bardic Gift seriously - Savil's always told me how vital the Bardic repertory is.:_ Vanyel's place in that repertory might cause him discomfort, but how would anyone from this far-flung clime know of the events that occurred at Stony Tor were it not for the words of the Bards? Without songs, how would anyone remember, fifty or a hundred years from now, what the Heralds of Valdemar had once done to protect their fellows? _:And if it's so important to us, why do we ignore such sublime skill just because it's not where we're used to seeing it? Why ignore Gifted children whose parents can't pay tutors and luthiers, and don't have Haven connections? Or who don't even have parents?:_

Yfandes's voice seemed sleepy as well as despondent. _:What would you have us do?:_

 _:I don't know. I'd suggest teaching a little music in Temple schools and looking out for children with great aptitude - but I'm not sure Stefen ever set foot in a Temple school.:_ He hadn't seen so much as a scrap of paper or spot of ink in Stefen's home, much less a book, which from someone drawn to verse and music was suggestive of illiteracy. 

He yawned so deep that she felt it and sent him a shimmer of exhausted affection. _:Sleep,:_ she ordered. _:You've a lot to do tomorrow.:_

 _That I do._ He felt time shifting under him, as if the river really were washing the whole earth away beneath him. Harri had been dead for less than a day. The spell was most effective when cast by a group of mages - pooled energy, sinking deep into the surroundings and showing what had occurred from every angle, could reveal what had passed perhaps as much as a week hence. Alone, he wasn't certain how long he had. Two more days might be too late - or it might not. He couldn't know.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Note to those who read the old version of this fic: due to a lot of cuts, I rolled the old chapters 4 & 5 into one chapter. Both would have been really short otherwise.)

By morning, Cul Aber was dappled with cloudshadow; the pale grey stones were bleached by sun, and the alleyways (Stefen's preferred routes, he noted) were dark grey shrouds. Birds circled above the rooftops, and in the gutters he saw two children gathering stones, preparing for their moment.

It didn't take long. One webbed foot rested on a rooftop and a rock flew up, sending the bird careening one way and two roof-tiles the other. The air filled with a cacophony of laughter and avian shrieks. 

As the agitated song died down, Stefen replaced it with one of his own. Valdir gritted his teeth and stared at the ground, attempting not to react to the choice of music. Attempting. It wouldn't do well to lose his patience; he thought it fortunate that in cold daylight Stefen had still been willing to offer Valdir his help. _No. No, I can't keep ignoring his evident fondness for the Demonsbane song, not without looking very unpleasant about it._ "You like that song awfully much," he ventured. 

Stefen shrugged, and his eyes grew distant. "Yeah, I do. It's a good story, you know? Gets to me, that there'd be someone who'd just _do_ all that. Got all that power, and instead of using it for himself, he put his neck out for some people who weren't even his sort," and he shook his head. "I first heard that song when I was a kid. Made me wish there were really people like Vanyel. Someone who'd do right by anyone as needed it." He stared thoughtfully at the ground they tramped upon, and then gave a sidelong look to Valdir as he attempted not to squirm. "So if you was a soldier down by Karse," he said slowly. "Maybe you'd know."

"Know what?"

" _Is_ he real?" Valdir's steps slowed to nothing. "I never thought so - but I met a man from Kettlesmith who swore that he was - he came through there once with all of his panoply, going north from the border. I don't figure people in stories for real, though," he speculated darkly. "Saying Vanyel is real, that's like saying a phoenix is real, or a god."

 _Phoenixes are also real_ , he thought helplessly as he pondered what to say. _A panoply. What would I even do with a panoply?_ Stefen seemed to shrink from him glumly - some of his discomfort must have shown in his face. "Herald-Mage Vanyel is real," he told him carefully. "The stories, I wouldn't put so much stock in."

"He's real? But he never saved no Hardornen slaves?" Stefen sounded disappointed.

"I heard he did," stammered Valdir. "But I doubt it was so grand as all that. It's just a song."

"You ever see him?" Stefen asked, and his voice was full of awe.

"Ah - only from a great distance," Valdir hedged, feeling his voice rise.

"Oh my _gods_ ," and Stefen bounced a little on his toes. "You _saw_ Herald-Mage Vanyel? It's all true? I never believed that man from Kettlesmith, I thought Vanyel must at least have been dead for a thousand years, but you're saying it's all true?" _I did not say it was all true._ Valdir held his tongue in sour frustration. "Just think, if he were here to clear up Cul Aber..." and Stefen trailed off, staring at the gutters, flecks of sun in his eyes.

"What would he do?" Valdir asked into the silence, in spite of himself.

"Dunno. If he rounded up the slave catchers there'd only be others pick up after they'd gone. Same for the drug sellers. And the watchmen. Even Poll or Silona. And the rest of us who just does what we must," he shrugged. "What I do know is, it would be like a story - there'd be something for a hero to do. Not this damn mess. But if I ever saw him, I wouldn't care what else happened," and a transcendent smile rose on his face. 

Valdir vaguely resented whoever it was that Stefen was smiling about. 

_Not me, that's for sure. I only ever did whatever damned messy thing I had to, and then some bard made it rhyme clean so I could never explain how it really -_

Stefen reached a guarding hand to Valdir's arm, and pointed at the wall ahead of them. "See that?" he gestured. They were at the corner of a tiny crossroad; across from them, a jagged scratch marked the wall. "We crossed into Morn land," he said quietly.

"Is it dangerous?" A little danger might make a pleasant distraction right now.

Stefen shrugged. "Not if you stick with me. I wouldn't stray too far, though. Folks with light fingers and heavy cudgels, you get me."

Valdir stared at the scratches they passed - scratches, scuffs, chipped walls, continuing along as they walked. Border disputes. Something he recognised. He Felt around them for hostility - but every predatory glance seemed to melt away from Stefen, who nodded curtly at every passer and stoop-sitter, greeting many by name, usually with a distaste so well concealed that only an Empath would have known of it. The river grew louder as they walked, and ahead of them, Valdir saw the path rising toward the river-wall. The cold came on them fast as the Culway came into view, and Valdir huddled in his cloak. But after the decrepitudes of the city, he was awed by the sight of the river in daylight - vast and high and racing north toward the ocean at the top of the world, spray like diamonds scattering against the wall. _It's like a node_ \- sum total of many waterways, a channel for life and strength, an artery. He'd _never_ seen so much water aside from in Evendim. In the spring tide, the Culway ran so fast it was almost clear - he could see every grey-green rock below them. To the southeast, he saw the River Aila flowing into the Culway from the east; the river that passed through Lydra, on the other side of the border. 

He closed his eyes. If he reached out his mind to the same place where he'd touched Harren two days ago - it would be so very much easier now, and even the pitiful energy he had would be more than enough to stretch across the distance - and he would feel nothing.

Stefen nudged him. "Something up?" 

"Nothing." _I'd feel nothing._ He shook his head slowly. What had Harri had done after they spoke, in the day and a half before he and his Companion had died? Would Harri would have paid for passage in Lydra, or headed overland to the Culway before seeking a ferryman? Who had he found - Hardornen smugglers, Cul Aber rivermen? Had he encountered other travellers, like the runaway slaves? How long had he still believed he'd make it home?

  
  


Stefen lead him further west by a thin path - always his preference, Valdir had noted. This end of the city seemed to be made of undulating slopes and cobbled valleys; he knew that before there had been a Valdemar, the river had swept around this low hilltop, and Cul Aber's fort and defences had been built on this convenience of landscape. On this high ground, Valdemar stood and took a last, lingering, guarded look eastward. But the Eastern Empire had forgotten them. Today the fort atop the city was no more than a folly, and every watchman he'd glimpsed on the walls had looked only inward for trouble.

He felt eyes on them as they passed; marked men on tavern-stoops, caps tipped to Stefen; he definitely would not have liked to pass through these streets alone, though in other ways, this quarter seemed more respectable than the one Stefen inhabited. Fewer cracks in walls and window-panes; glass so clear that he sometimes glimpsed the lives behind it; a woman sweeping, another rocking a cradle. "Nice, isn't it?" Stefen muttered, as if sensing his thoughts. "Wouldn't want to live in these parts myself. Feels too exposed, right at the foot of yon hill," and he pointed his thumb at the looming shadow of the fort. "I lived all my life on Scale side."

"You're with the Scale? You don't wear their mark -"

"I ain't Scale. I'm _with_ myself. No one marks me," Stefen said firmly. "Ask me, marking people is the whole damn problem. Just another damn wall you got to find a crack through. Here now," he announced, and Valdir saw that the route ahead of them spilled out into a bustling square, full of street-traders. "Figured I should show you the Grand Bazaar. There's a good trade in, ah, slightly damp goods around here. We could see what's new in this week. Ask where it all came from," and his eyes narrowed against the wind.

  
  


The North Gate was a stone arch above rusted iron doors that didn't look like they'd been closed in years. He followed Stef as he dodged between the heavily-laden carts rolling in and out of the city. Merely breathing near those stinking oxen was unpleasant. _Ruin and filth - and then Stefen, making his way with music?_ He closed his eyes for a bare moment, and remembered the feeling of red light lapping over him beside the river; warming him as he shivered, soothing him as he ached. A hidden heart, beating so close to him.

Valdir glanced at the stalls around the near edge of the square as they passed - food and spices, bolts of cloth, nothing interesting. At the edge of the square was a theatre that looked like it had been shuttered for years, a fading signboard hanging sideward above the wide-open doors, proclaiming _'The Grand Northgate Playhouse.'_ He concluded this was the source of the bazaar's Grandness, as he saw no other sign of it. The market snaked through the streets ahead of them, stallholders selling simple things, dubious herbs, and odd assortments of goods, perhaps robbed. Stefen leaned close to him amid the crowd. "You see something familiar for sale, you tell me," he murmured, and then spun on his heel and peered at the rows of trinkets on the stall beside them, giving a jaunty wave to the stallholder. "Morning, Shute."

"Stef," she nodded. "Looking for something particular?"

Stef gave her a sly smile. "I got some amends to make. Know where I could see something new to these shores that might impress a lady?" 

"You pissed off Loa again? Well I'm sorry, but there ain't nothing new under this moon," she sniffed. As they spoke, Valdir cast his eyes along the trestle; he saw brooches, long hair-pins, neatly folded clothes. Nothing that could even conceivably have belonged to Harri. Stefen bantered back and forth with the brooch-seller, and the next beside her, about who had newly come by what, and Valdir listened intently even as he pretended to ignore them. He wasn't even sure he'd know what to look for if he saw it -

"Valdir!" 

He turned, trying to place the voice. _Who? Who even_ knows _me?_ The face of the man striding toward him was opaque to him, somehow even harder to find in his memory than the voice. Ruddy, round, bearded; older and softer than most of the toughs who might have caught Valdir's name lately. "You made it out!" He was smiling even as Valdir's stomach sank. "It's me, Dower," and he grabbed Valdir's arms and shook them vigorously.

_Oh, gods._

"Old friend?" asked Stefen, looking curiously over his shoulder.

"Ah. Stefen, this is Dower." He gave an awkward introductory wave, but Dower snorted. 

"Everyone knows what Stef is," he explained, as if to a child. 

Stefen smiled graciously, but shot Valdir a questioning look. He explained quickly. "Dower and I, uh, met a short while ago in Mountather -"

"In the cells, no less!" continued Dower in triumph.

At that, Stefen's eyebrows retreated into his hairline. "I did _tell_ you it was just a misunderstanding," Valdir replied quickly. "They soon realised I wasn't really a smuggler - what a notion! - and I headed off as soon as I could. Didn't want to risk more of my luck."

"Aye, you said you had business up in Cul Aber," and Dower smiled curiously. 

_Fishing for his cut - is that all anyone ever does here?_ He shrugged affably. "If it comes to anything, I'll be sure to let you know," he pledged, and he shot Stefen a pleading look. _Please. Get me away. I'll come up with a story to tell you later._

Stef hooked a merciful arm about him - much tighter than mercy alone required, and his warmth against Valdir's ribs seemed to momentarily still the biting breeze. Dower flinched from them as most men might, and Stefen spun him about with a smirk and a swagger and frogmarched him down the market.

Valdir tried to keep in step as Stef's grip on him loosened; a quick glance behind confirmed that Dower had made himself scarce. That encounter had been doubly unsettling - _I would never have thought to see my cellmates again. And it's a long time since I last thought to flaunt myself just to have a man leave me be..._

Leren. Why was he thinking of the games he'd played with Leren? He remembered the feeling of darkness devouring the priest's mind, and tried to shake off that shadow of memory - it wasn't something that should trouble harmless minstrel Valdir. Stefen released him, and eyed him questioningly. "Well, that's not someone I thought I'd run into again," murmured Valdir, scrambling for scraps to patch up his torn history.

"Night in lockup? And I took you for a nice boy." The smile fell from his face. "You want my advice?" he whispered. "This ain't Mountather. Cul Aber, you got to make damn sure you've dropped an anchor. If the watchmen pick you up here, you tell 'em you live at my place on Old Arch Street and Masonway, and you got family no further out than Horstein - whatever you got to say to stop them calling you vagrant, even if you is one." His arm dropped stiffly. "Best if you keep out of trouble, mind."

"You seem to manage it," he replied, confused.

"I learned. Got to be someone. Got to take care of yourself." His swagger became a shiver in the cold breeze, hair falling over his face so Valdir couldn't see his expression. "Don't ever let them take you vagrant, okay?"

Valdir nodded, dropping his eyes to the trestle that rocked on the cobbles beside him, laden with oddments of leatherwork and metal - true to Stefen's word, much of both showed signs of water damage, shrivelled or corroded in the Culway's dark embrace.

His eyes fell on a tarnished silver ring.

He gasped, and reached for it before he could stop himself. The stallholder started as he flicked it onto its edge, turning it through its full arc. Simple knotwork, a pattern of silver braids - and there at the back of the loop, the place where the knots changed direction; a quirk, an engraver's error, a one-of-a-kind mistake.

He knew that pattern's reflection so well. He'd seen it only in reverse image. Red ridges impressed on wax, cracking under his fingers. A promise set over a secret.

_:Tran, I've found Harri's seal ring.:_

  
  


The tavern was a spindle-thin oddity, a woodframe and plaster afterthought jammed between two looming stone buildings, both of which seemed, to his blurred, uncertain eyes, to be listing against its splintering beams. The bar was packed though it wasn't yet noon - _with the river impassable, do the docksmen and sailors and smugglers have anything better to do than get blind drunk before noon?_ Stefen had cajoled for them an empty table at the back. And a flagon of cider that smelt like it could take his tongue off. And only one empty glass; the cup the serving-boy placed in front of Stefen was full. Of water. "He knows I don't drink most-times," Stef explained. "But I tip as if I did, so he don't care."

He dared a swallow, and another, and then sank his head onto his own folded arms.

He felt Stefen's eyes resting on him as he stared at the cracked wall - ghosting over his bare neck as his hair tumbled onto the table. Clouded green irises, eyelids at half mast in respect. 

_He thinks I only just found out he was right. That Harren's dead. That Harri told me he was going to leave Hardorn and now he's dead._

_:Van?:_ He screwed his eyes shut as he acknowledged Tantras. The acrid liquor was dissolving the knot of guilt in his stomach, dissipating it all the way through him; his ears felt like they were filling with hot water. _:I have the ring. It's definitely Harri's - I'd know that pattern anywhere.:_ Harri had sent dozens of letters as he travelled - most sealed with a simple thumbprint, harmless greetings, red waxen herrings. The poorly engraved knotwork wedding band had only been pressed to the seal when he had something important to write between the lines. _:I've got that fence down at the gatehouse lockup - I already put him under Truth Spell and talked to him a while.:_

 _:How did he get hold of Harri's seal ring?:_ he asked, acid anger burning the thought through the void.

 _:Beachcombing north of the city, he said. Which was a lie,:_ Tran added needlessly. _:I got the name of his source out of him. Pity that most of the watchmen would rather bother the market traders than take on the gang,:_ he groused. At this point, Van wasn't surprised to hear that. _:Van... Could you walk me through it again? What you felt when he...:_

He raised his head far enough to take another swig of the vicious drink, and laid his forehead against the cool wood of the table. The effort of Mindspeaking felt like drawing a serrated knife over his Gate-addled channels. _:I'll try. I guess I should start three days ago, when Harren told me he was leaving Hardorn -:_

_:You never told me why he headed for home so much earlier than he planned to.:_

_:It was my idea.:_ Tantras fumbled the contact in surprise, and Vanyel's head lurched, a torrent tossing inside his skull, spray dancing over jagged thoughts. Tantras's mind found him again soon enough. _:Harri was heading north following traces of magic - it's a long time since we'd heard talk of Hardornen magic, so we assumed they were playing hosts to a foreign mage - or more than one. When he reached Lydra, he sensed blood power, and...:_ He hesitated. His mind spun around in an eddy - Leren, why had he thought of Leren lately? _:Dark wings,:_ he finished.

 _:I take it that's bad, then?:_ Tran asked blandly.

The shadows were folding in around him; to his closed-eyed vision, Stefen was but a bright red candle in the vastness of the dark - a fierce and tiny light, without shelter. _:I hoped if Harri could get back into Valdemar - inside our new defences - he'd be safe.: Please forgive me. :When it happened, I was asleep -:_

_:I know. What did it... Well, how does that...work?:_

Tantras was uneasy with Vanyel's new insight into the his comrades' moments of death. He wasn't the only one, either. _:I don't yet know,:_ he admitted. _:Harri's only the second Herald to die since we changed the Web.:_ He stared deep into the darkness, seeing years of this ahead of him - death after death pelting his senses, each one leaving an indelible bruise. _What was it I did to bring this upon myself? Was it my arrogance, changing what we've always had? Was it a reminder that I'm responsible for all these lives and ought to bear their ends?_

_:And Osana's passing was a little less sudden -:_

_:Quite.:_ He cut off Tran's musing. Herald Osana had been ninety-one, and had been bedridden for some time. The flashes of pain and light that had overcome him at her passing were still _within_ him in a way he could never have explained to Tantras - a sharp ghost-image seared into his nerves. He knew Harren's agony would never, ever leave him. _:I felt - cold, and then burning - deep into the skin.:_ Not a good description. He had no good description, and Tran should take that as a mercy. _You don't want me to share this._

The brief touch at his shoulder startled him. "I know there's not much I could say, but, you want a song?"

"What?" he murmured, not understanding.

"I sing pain away," Stefen explained, and even in his soft intonations there were spirits of peace and slumber. Argonel diluting the rage in his veins. Soft red petals fading on a poppyhead. "I know I can't change nothing, but if you don't feel right and you want a moment's rest..."

Vanyel raised his head, one eye open. "What," he breathed. _That's what you do? And you know I'm hurting, even if it's just in my mind?_

"I sing pain away," Stef repeated, his cheeks flushing. "I just always done it, all my life. Used to save my keeper from wasting her drinking money on hempleaf." 

Bitter smoke in his ears. "Your keeper?"

Stefen shook his head. "Ain't no other word for her. Her name was Berte - I don't know how she came by me. I told you I used to sing in Pinter Square?" Valdir nodded. "She kept an eye on me, I made some coin singing on the street, she spent it on liquor and dreamerie... That's how things were until she died."

"I'm sorry," he murmured automatically.

"Spare me. _You_ gone lost a friend who mattered - someone who had a life. Berte and her crowd - those people, the drugs own them. They ain't friends - they can't have friends. Everything's about the drugs. I weren't nothing to them but a way to get money for their drugs, and then a way to not get kicked in the teeth by the comedown. I can always tell when someone needs their pain gone," he added. 

Valdir gazed into Stefen's cup of murky water. It occurred to him that no one at the Lighthouse Market had attempted to sell them _anything_ ; not drugs, distilled spirits or any variety of human flesh. " _You_ don't drink -"

"I got my other vices," Stef assured him darkly. "And I got some sense about when a man could do with a drink, but it ain't a steady way to live. High water, low water," he shrugged. "Fuck it all, what I'm about is keeping the level," and he waved a hand at the level of Valdir's eyes, palm down. "Berte didn't have nothing left in her life but those highs and lows. I heard tell she had kids of her own once - sold them to the Hardornen slavers when they got old enough to bring her more trouble than coin." Valdir gasped low, and Stefen raised a hand to his own mouth. "'Enough about my life. You got your own troubles," he said, as if he'd said more than he'd meant to. "So you want a damned song?"

"No," Valdir replied, reeling from his words. _Gods, but I do. But I can't. I am not letting another human being deal with how I feel right now._ He stared at Stefen's thin hands, curled around his cup. Steady, tenacious, _kind_ hands. _I can't._ The thought of taking the offered respite overwhelmed him, and he shook, tipsy and adrift in remembered sensation - touch, warmth, pain. The only thing that seemed worse than feeling was the end of all feeling. And his lips felt warm again, like a cinder of the kiss they should never have shared; he imagined Stefen's song breathing gently on that heat.

_I can't._

"Right." Stef looked aside, his mouth curling with frustration. "Don't think I got no respect. I'd be saying the stuff you're meant to say when someone's dead - about being in the Havens or the good life they lived, I can mouth that well as anyone but you don't want to hear it, do you?"

 _Astute._ He breathed fast between his smouldering lips, wondering at how well Stefen could understand him. "No, I don't." Words fanning those embers. Sharp green eyes pricking at his pretences. _How do I keep hiding from someone who lives by singing and knowing people and turning every stone - ?_

"Wish I'd had enough coin on me to pay Tayard for the ring," Stef sighed. "I could pull a few strings, scrape up enough tonight then go down on the morrow to see if -" Valdir shook his head silently, clutching his glass convulsively and then pushing it aside. _Please no. Don't do that for me._ Because Tantras already had both ring and fence in hand, and of all the things to worry about now he _didn't want Stefen to know that_ \- and he rested his head in his arms again, shaking from the weird, hysteric banality of sudden death. Shaking the way he should have been a day ago. _I hadn't the time to feel anything. I never do. And every time - someone dies and there's just more to_ do _, more pieces for me to pick up, and I can't stop like this. I can't allow myself the luxury._

Something nudged his elbow. Stefen proffering the cup again. Valdir seized it, and raised his head to drink, met Stefen's eyes in that brief way of strangers in passing. "Your friend was married? Babes back home?"

"Widowed," explained Valdir. A lie, but it was Harri's accustomed lie; an excuse to wear a ring and to seek company while shunning attachment. Why was he compelled to keep Harri's secrets? _You're making me speak of him, share him; you don't know how I'm always alone when someone dies._

Maybe that was why it was such a relief to be someone - anyone - but himself.

"Come from out west, like you?" Stef asked gently.

"Everything's west of here." He stared blankly at the table.

"Is not," corrected Stefen. "World don't stop at the edge of the river - worse luck." He set an elbow on the table. Valdir knew that Stef had one last question - the one he hadn't wanted to ask. "So what you do now you know he ain't going to be meeting you here? You going back where'ere you came?"

And there was another reason Valdir never got close to people. It got harder and harder to keep up with his own story, to invent reasons to keep investigating. "I...I need to know what happened to him," he said hesitantly and Stefen laughed in his face.

"Trust me, that's the _last_ thing you need to know." He shook his head. "I get it, I seen it - someone dies of a sudden, it's not over for you until you know why. You'll go mad chasing a truth that ain't there - doesn't matter who you ask, how much you pay to priests or fortune tellers or the river herself. You won't find no reason for it, not on the river or your soul. You won't get naught good come of seeking truth. He's still dead, and we're but flotsam floating down to the sea."

His frustration and black anger clouded out the warm flames of Stefen's eyes. _You're right. If I was doing this for myself - if I was who you think I am - I'd be a hopeless mad fool to keep trying. So for Valdemar's sake, please believe that I'm a hopeless mad fool._ "So where would that trader have got my friend's ring -"

"I'm telling you, Tayard never want to know where his goods come from. He's a fence," Stefen explained patiently. "Less he knows, happier he is, happier his sources are. You won't get nothing on them."

And Tantras was probing that cosy arrangement even as they spoke. "I see," he muttered. "No one wants to know what happens on the river?" The men crushed together at the bar had started singing - some oar-shanty he'd never heard before. "No one pays an eye to the water? Not the fences or the watchmen or the pirates -"

"Shh, there's a dirty word," Stefen warned him. "It's over. Drink up, and let it lie." But his eyes flickered with doubt.

Valdir seized on it. "I can't." _Think me mad, if you will - but look at me and know that I need to find out what became of Harri._ "Just tell me one thing - if we'd found nothing at the bazaar, would that have been the end of it for you? Would you have told me to stop looking for him?"

"You're mad." Stefen hung his head. "I had one more notion," he said grudgingly. "If anyone's watching, it would be Loa of Morn."

He clutched that fine straw with both hands. "Then tell me where to find them. I'll not trouble you further, just direct me and -"

"Oh no. I wouldn't do that to no one I _hated_ , never mind you. Captain Silona - he's madder than you are and he ain't even the dangerous one. That would be Loa - his daughter. They'd split you for breakfast, but I'm in well enough with them that Silona _might_ not do nothing crazy if I pay him a call. Loa knows me, is the good part. The bad part," he added under his breath, "is that Loa knows me."

  
  


Stefen made him eat. Something for something, he explained; if Valdir ate and sobered up a little, Stefen would tell him about the Morn. He had little choice but to go along with the nakedly manipulative coddling. "Anyone asks me," Stef hissed, as Valdir reluctantly spooned up the thick shellfish soup, "I'm in good with the Morn. Honest dealers, their word's as good as mine, trust Stefen on this one. Reality is a bit more complicated."

"Silona sounds like an Ifteli name," he observed, puzzled.

"You know a lot," Stefen's eyes narrowed. "Yeah, he's from Iftel. Exiled." Valdir heard the distant clatter of his own spoon hitting the floor. "You know a _lot_ if you know what that means," Stef added suspiciously.

"I've heard stories," he replied stiffly as he retrieved the spoon, wiping it on a corner of tablecloth that wasn't much cleaner than the rushes on the ground, if at all. "They say Iftel is blessed by the gods - so what you'd have to do to be exiled -"

Stefen nodded. "No one knows for sure what Silona did - maybe not even Loa. He's made sure there's all kinds of stories though - heresies, consorting with demon princes, that sort of thing. What we do know is, he's not just exiled - Iftel cursed him, too. They set him out in the Northern Ocean and told him that should he even set foot in any of Iftel's neighbours, he'll die. That god wanted him _far_ gone."

Valdir bilnked. "But Valdemar... Oh." 

Stefen nodded. "Silona lives on the Culway. He gets around a bit - moors at Lydra sometimes, and they say he goes upriver to Karse when he needs to stretch his legs. Loa conducts all his business ashore. _She_ ain't cursed."

"Why are you afraid of them?" Valdir asked.

Stefen looked at him sidelong. "Except for the demon princes, you mean? That not enough to bother you?" Valdir stared back, his face vacant, his scarred back flexing under his ragged clothes. "Silona's _capricious_ , is why. You never know what you might pay when you deal with the Morn. He gets more out of truce than anyone, but I still figure he's most like to break it. He likes breaking things. Best hope is, he decides not to break something that's _mine_."

Here was his chance to enquire. "I've heard tell of the song truce -" Stefen smiled tightly, not replying. "I thought you would know of it."

"You could say that," he replied, droll as the devil himself. "What you heard about it?"

Valdir thought back to how his cellmates had invoked the truce, included him under it. "As well as being a rule against fighting the other gang, it requires helping each other?"

Stefen snorted. "Keep your voice down," and he gestured to the crowd around them. "Toughs wouldn't be caught dead _helping_ each other. But before song truce, Cul Aber used to be more like two different cities - walls around everything, and half the people _inside_ the damn walls never even asked to be there. People got killed just for being on the wrong street."

He had seen such occurrences on other porous borders.

"Song truce is just, you don't hurt no one who ain't hurting you, and you don't lay a fellow out for asking questions. Not much to it, but you get that down, you got a chance to talk about more. You _cooperate_ , even with them you'd rather put your eyes out than _help_. You can go free as you like, so long as you don't tread on no toes, and you couldn't always say that in Cul Aber. You still got to watch where you take and where you sell and where you leave marks, but not where you go or who you talk to," Stefen explained. "And even Silona can sit on the river and turn some coin off of that, and he knows it."

"I can imagine," Valdir breathed. All too easily. "How did it happen?" _We train Bards for years to negotiate and soothe away trouble. Did you tame a city alone?_

"S'another story." Stefen drew the words out slowly. "And it is and it isn't about Morn, so I've a mind to save it." He rapped his fingers on the table, music in his least gesture. "You set?"

"Aye." He'd managed most of the soup, and hadn't much stomach for the rest. "How lucky I was that you found me," he added, quite honestly. "I can't imagine how I would have found my way without you -"

"And you'd squander that luck on courting the Morn?" Stefen shook his head. "Seems like, you know things but don't know when to stop."

"That's been said of me," he conceded. _(Of who?)_

Stefen stared at him, shaking his head, and he felt Valdir - the hapless, inoffensive Valdir he'd played on many a stage in the past - dance out of his reach. "You'd think, you survive a war, you had enough of lost causes."

"You don't know when something's lost," and he looked down at his hands. "You don't know when it's still worth hanging on. These aren't the times people sing about."

Stefen was quiet for a few seconds. "That's the truth - I don't know a song for that, and I thought I knew a song for everything. I think there _should_ be a song for everything - made a lot of my own that way."

"I don't make songs."

"You make _trouble_ ," Stefen reminded him, and he counted out coppers onto the tabletop. Valdir followed him as he shouldered his way to the door. "Just hope Loa like the look of you," he muttered as they stepped outside. "It's all that -"

Stefen gasped, and flattened himself against the side of the tiny porch, Valdir sliding alongside him without thought. 

Two men passed down the street, mounted. One was an unknown to him, in a crisp grey uniform and plumed hat. The other was less of a mystery. Stefen breathed hard at his shoulder, gazing up at Tantras's majestic figure, his frowning, sculpted face. Delian looked at them sideways, and winked at him.

 _:Tran,:_ Vanyel called, willing his friend _not_ to look down at them. He shuffled close against Stefen, so close he could feel the young man shiver. _:Fancy seeing you here.:_

 _:And you,:_ Tantras murmured, a little amused. _:That's your street-bard? Delian had been wanting a good look at him.:_

His reply wasn't entirely verbal - _:Yes,:_ it included, and _:more besides.:_ Alongside him, Stefen appeared to be trying to retreat into the grey stone. _:I found out a little more about the song truce,:_ he added.

As he explained, he could almost see the hairs standing up on Tran's retreating neck. _:So you think this truce is all just one gang fixer, and you found him?:_

 _:No, he found me,:_ he replied in wonder. 

_:Bards,:_ and Tantras turned his head slightly, revealing a crooked, incredulous smile. _:Can't stand them -:_

 _:- can't live without them,:_ Vanyel finished, shaking his head, feeling a small smile on his lips. Stefen looked up at him strangely, and he inwardly kicked himself for the lack of focus. _:Though if someone he knows can tell us what happened to Harri -:_

Tantras indicated grudging agreement. _:At this point, I can't say I mind what form of lawless lowlife you turn up as witnesses, so long as you find someone who knows enough that you can use that damned spell.:_

The thought set Vanyel's curiosity tugging at his faith, unravelling it from one corner. _:On that note... I wonder if you could ask a favour of the city watchmen for me.:_ Tantras queried him wordlessly, with something that in person may have become a raised eyebrow. _:Ask if they have an arrest record for Stefen.:_

Tantras startled, and sent two queries simultaneously. _:What's his last name? Why?:_

 _:Don't think he uses one. I know you weren't sure of him,:_ Vanyel addressed the latter point awkwardly.

_:And neither are you?:_

_:I don't know,:_ he replied, not wholly comfortable with his own reasoning. _:But I want to find out.:_ He dropped the contact with the question still hanging over him. Beside him, Stefen shivered again, and not from the cold.

"Did you _see_ that?" he whispered, entirely rhetorically. "It _looked_ at me. Those eyes... And he was so..." Stefen's hush, the rose on his cheeks, were more than enough to convey what was _so_ about Tantras. _I don't disagree, but -_ Valdir looked away, feeling his ears burn. "That was a _Herald_? On a _Companion_?" He turned to Valdir, eyes wide in consternation. Valdir bit his lip and nodded in confirmation. "And he's with the _watch captain_."

That last was exclaimed in bitter disappointment. Betrayal. 

"But he's so..." Stefen shook his head. "Might have preferred 'em not real, ain't that as always is," and he stared wistfully at the retreating figures. "Why would a gods damned Herald come here?"

Stefen tapped his foot; far down the street, Valdir could still hear Delian's hoofbeats.

"Why," and Stefen looked straight at Valdir, his eyes like shards of broken glass.


	5. Chapter 5

Beside him, Valdir heard Stefen's foot tap in a soft, declining rhythm, fading into the sound of the city. Tantras had vanished down the street, his presence growing distant as a far moon behind the thick clouds hanging over the river. Stefen paused, and as another crowd of sailors shoved past them, he slid around the corner of the tavern porch into the street, leaving Valdir to almost get his nose bloodied by the swinging door.

There had been times in his life that he found himself immensely frustrated that, while he was entirely capable of discovering what someone was thinking, he couldn't _do_ it. Wouldn't. But he _wanted_ to reach right past Stefen's calculating scowl and unlock its elusive meaning.

"Out of sight," Stefen murmured. He hooked his thumbs in his belt, and leaned cautiously one way and then another, looking either way down the street. "I wait all my life to see a Herald, and then..."

 _Heralds don't come here._ Why would they? A small city, with civic machinery well in place - a portmaster and borderguards and patrolling watchmen, and functionaries sending reports and meagre tax remittances - would often be omitted from circuit to allow Heralds to focus on more isolated climes. _There haven't been enough of us since the war began, and we don't come close enough to see that machinery turn -_

Stefen softly sang the opening bars of a song as he looked around the crowded streets. Not the Demonsbane song this time. No, it was the Shadow Stalker song, and it sent a strange pain through him - fell, dissonant memories, distortions of a life that wasn't Valdir's anyway. He chewed on the inside of his cheek until Stef fell silent. "Follow me quick," Stef told him, and he was gone in a flash, down the street and into a tiny alley.

Valdir followed. He had noted how consistently the routes Stefen picked were not those he would have walked alone himself; thin paths, shaded and thick with grime and litter. _Unpatrolled_ streets. Valdir was prepared to hold his nose in deference to his guide's aversion to the light of the law; better than losing his only source. _Though I don't like leaning on only one source._ It reminded him uncomfortably of being in Highjorune, stumbling in darkness and reliant on one shuttered, flickering candle of insight. _If there's anyone else who would tell me as much of Cul Aber as Stefen, I haven't the time to find them. Harri's been dead for a day and a half._

Even at the height of afternoon, from the alleyways Cul Aber seemed thick with layers of shadows. He thought of the shade cast beyond its own walls - hooks stretched east into the river. _It's all, everything I've seen of Cul Aber, from Stef's word. I can't separate him from the city._ He had a sense of the two paths coinciding - Harri's death, Stefen's life, crossing like lines of magic. Forming a node.

He tried to keep his bearings as Stefen picked his way down the backstreets with his hand to the wall, feeling along the weather-worn stones as if they spoke to him in some old, dense dialect that eluded Valdir. Southeast, paralleling the curve in the river that the whole city crooked around. Stefen's other hand rested near his belt - over a purse, perhaps, though they seemed alone save for stoop-smokers and children picking through whatever rubbish hadn't been swept clean by the vicious winds.

"Young Stefen," a voice called.

Stefen stumbled to a halt - the first time Valdir had seen him be less than graceful. "Who goes there?" 

A shadow arose from a pile of alley-scraps - stained cloth, a cracked wooden staff, the man beneath it even thinner and paler than Stefen. Valdir gasped as he saw blood seeping through ragged clothes. The man lifted his hood, revealing a fresh gash on his scalp, a bruise obliterating the crude Scale tattoo on his withered face. "It's Dotrid, sir, begging your service." Stefen stepped back from him, a grimace on his face. "I can pay you for passage through Morn land -"

" _Passage?_ I don't play ferryman since truce," Stefen explained patiently, addressing the injured man as if he were mad. There was a tension written in his back that his voice did not admit to. He had risen on the balls of his feet, as if ready to run away from the decrepit old man.

"They _broke_ truce," Dotrid explained, leaning on his stick and waving at his wounds. "Ain't no truce no more. You look at this -"

"Who you piss off this time?" Stef asked longsufferingly. Valdir cautiously opened his empathic senses, and found uncertainty colouring Stefen's aura dark.

"No one! They say Loa put word out that Dotrid snitched on a Morn man, and got every fence in the Grand Bazaar put under arrest! But I never! Who would do such a vile thing!"

Stefen bit his lip, and glanced back at Valdir, as if to check he was still close. He appeared oddly relieved. "You're daft. What you want me to do of it?"

"Take me to talk to Silona, and I'll tell him -"

"You'll tell him you're daft," muttered Stefen. He stared at the ground, calculating. "Listen. I got places to be. If I sees you here this time tomorrow, and you got three silver for me, I'll do it, coin first."

Dotrid's stick rattled against the wall. " _Three_ silver _first_? I say, that's steep for a favour for a longstanding friend to you -" but Stefen was already striding off, tripping so fast down the alleyway it was hard for Valdir to keep up with him. They reached another main street, and Stefen ducked across it and into the backstreets beyond. Only there did he slow for a moment to allow Valdir to catch up to him.

"That was Dotrid the Snitch, also known as Dotrid the Liar," he explained. "He's got himself a reputation - watchmen are the only ones listen to him, guess cause he says all kinds of things they like hearing."

"You don't like him," Valdir observed. Stef's words had carried more than the ordinary disdain that he would have expected toward an alleged informant - he _really_ didn't like the man. There had been a thick, angry disgust in his words.

"If he shows up with my money and wants to call on Silona for another beating, no skin off my nose..." He shrugged. "But he ain't no friend of mine. He was one of Berte's hangers-on." 

Valdir felt that he'd reached into a thicket of thorns, so far in that the words would snag sharp on his skin whether he should retreat or go deeper. But the Empath in him could only reach out and grasp at them. "Your keeper's crowd?"

Stefen's face curled. "Yeah. She and I had a tenement gaff for a while - types like Dotrid were always over there, wheedling for something or giving her something for something. After she died, I go out one day to sing for pennies and I come home and find him and two more smoking in my bed like they owned the place, 'cause that's what they always did when they had some and nowhere to go with it and who cared if she was fucking _dead_ , they still felt had more right to be at Berte's place than I did." He looked away suddenly, staring down the street toward the river. "So damn right I don't like him, but he had me worried for a second."

"About what?" Valdir breathed.

"The truce," Stefen frowned. "Dare say Dotrid had it coming, but I don't like when I see someone's face beat in on my watch. I seen too many troubles today," and he looked at Valdir significantly. "New faces round, old ones getting caved in. Things out of place and the law crawling on them and riling the Morn - ain't asking, but I can't rule out any reasons as to why," he said delicately, and tilted his head.

"What do you mean?" Valdir asked carefully.

Stefen's voice dropped low. "I ain't asking or aught. But case you forgot, not two hours ago we met a Scale man thought you was in rough straits with the law, and now I hear they're shaking down the Morn and Silona's out for blood, and I see a Herald come straight out of a song and riding down the Causeway?"

A shiver ran up Valdir's back. "No - I'm not -"

"Ain't asking what's is or not," Stefen reiterated, quite firmly. "Never matters what's true or not. I only wonder what they're all thinking of you."

 _Me too. Often_ , he thought grimly, and closed his eyes. _Valdir is just a harmless minstrel. He's only here because_ I _don't want to make trouble._ He tried to find his mistake, running back in his mind through the streets they'd walked, listening for hoofbeats. _So Tantras kicked a hornet's nest at the bazaar...?_ He felt himself blunder through the delicate ecology of chalk-marks and territorial violence. Tantras had guides of his own - but they were less sensitive than Valdir's, and tragically aware of Tantras's position above them.

He opened his eyes again, and found Stefen glancing at him while pretending not to. Stef shrugged, and continued up the alleyway, rising up to the river-wall, feet sliding on loose and slippery cobbles. _Tread careful_ , Valdir warned himself as the water grew loud in his ears. The swollen river spread before them, so vast and stormy that the land beyond - far and foreign Hardorn - seemed an unreachable dream.

Valdir had seen little of the harbour when they'd passed by last night - only a few lights on the water. The riverfront was dotted with wooden quays in a patchwork of disrepair. Barges and longships were moored here and there, perhaps a dozen in total, but in daylight hours his eyes were drawn immediately to the ship moored at the end of the longest of the jetties. He'd seen larger ships on Lake Evendim, but few even there; it could have been home to a dozen people and still carried cargo and cannon without trouble. The ship was stained dark and hung with lanterns. A half-dozen ruffians endured the cold to sit on the roof or the prow, an ale-jug passing from hand to hand. _We walked near here last night - I heard their voices -_

Stefen extended his right arm so fast that Valdir walked into it. He turned, spread his palm on Valdir's chest, then raised both hands to his face - not gentle, not kind, but interrogative, testing the heat of his skin, the strength of his pulse, lifting his brows as if searching his eyes for sanity, or at least sobriety. "I'm done telling you not to do this. But you go talk to the Morn without gold in your pocket, odds are, Silona's going to test you. And he ain't gonna be in a good mood. Morn takes blood credit - only lends favours to those prove they got the salt to pay them back," and Stefen looked at him measuringly. "You can handle yourself in a fight, right?" Valdir nodded. "You might have to. I got to say, I hope you're up to it, because," and he looked away, staring across the river. "I may be getting a taste for your madness."

Valdir felt the wind cut straight through his chest - freezing and unsettling him, pulling the layers of his self this way and that. He couldn't speak.

"I still telling you, it's not worth it," Stefen continued blithely. "Truth is the worst reason to do anything - you look for truth in a hash like this, all you going to find is evil, and it ain't like no songs from that war of yours. There's no glory on the river." Stefen looked at him with shadowed eyes - full of fear and sorrow and a strange recrimination - before turning back to the river and singing almost absently, _"It was just a week till Sovvan, and the nights were turning chill..."_

_You're right about one thing - I'm certainly mad._

With that, Stefen leapt down the steps towards the dock where Silona's flagship was moored; almost immediately, four of the slouching sailors rose to their feet on the prow. The wind bit fierce, and Stefen strode the jetty ahead of Valdir with his cloak tight about him and his scarf struggling to escape, stray waves of spray scattering over the boards. They were soon close enough for him to read the ship's nameplate, though the first row of characters meant nothing to him - Ifteli script looked similar to Karsite, equally indecipherable; the Valdemaran letters beneath read _Winter Sunrise._

With a hand to his eyes against the wind and the sun on the river, Valdir looked to the men who had made ready to receive them; apart from the semicircle Morn tattoos on their hands or faces, little marked them as alike to each other. The man closest to them seemed the oldest, perhaps because so much of him seemed torn and restitched, clumsily repaired after some fight or another, from his cloak to his boots to his glower at their approach. His face had clearly taken a few kicks, and the sword he brandished looked equally nicked and weathered.

Two were little more than boys; one looked Hardornen, and Valdir wasn't sure about the other. They were otherwise made in the same image - jewels in their ears and knives worn openly in belt-sheaths. The Hardornen lad had grown his hair out, and it was set in grimy blond coils. Behind them stood a man so tall and broad as to seem unmoveable; he was notably less battered than their leader, but then, who would dare?

"Stef. What's the trouble?" the first of them said, and Stefen nodded to him politely.

"Just paying a call on a lady, Thyll," and he flicked his cloak back over his shoulder to demonstrate that he carried no weapons. Valdir's eyes immediately dropped to his boots, but a casual glance didn't reveal a blade.

"And your friend?" Thyll's lips curled as he looked down at Valdir. "You sure Loa wants to meet him, because it won't be on my head if she don't."

"We wouldn't trouble her if it weren't of import." He spoke with a little lilt and formality, as if he were playing a courtier on the stage. 

"You'll vouch for him?" asked Thyll suspiciously.

Valdir's heart froze when Stefen looked back at him, but his eyes were fleeting and unseeing, telling him only that he didn't care to see anything at all. Somewhere, he'd already made up his mind about what Valdir was. "Yes, on my soul I would," he answered solemnly.

"You don't _have_ one," Thyll muttered, and he waved them aboard even as Stefen's blank eyes stared out across the river. 

  
  


Stefen knew where he was going, lifting the hatch that led down into the ship's living quarters while Valdir was still catching his balance. The pirate children stifled laughter at him. He had noticed their odd bearing towards Stefen, and took heed of their empathic signals as he crossed the deck; Stefen's presence had provoked a strange blend of familiarity and _fear_. Not _of_ Stefen, surely? He thought of Evendim legends that told of redheads being cursed. _No, an Evendim crew would have tossed him overboard by now. There's some other history here._

Belowdecks, Stefen lead him toward the stern through a dark passage, Valdir stooping under the beams. He'd rarely stepped onto anything larger than a rowboat before - even the largest Evendim vessels were built by fishermen, with vast open holds and tight cabins to hole up from the rain. The _Winter Sunrise_ was someone's _home_ ; opulent and varnished, and with space for comforts and treasures and a pack of guard dogs.

He smelt herb smoke, and its source soon came into view; another gilded young sailor, leaning on the ships' beams in an alcove, sucking on a glass pipe. A curved sword rested on her knee. "The lady's resting -"

"The lady can speak for herself," a voice called through the cabin door beside her. "Let the scoundrels pass."

Stefen nudged past the scowling bodyguard, and palmed open the sliding door. Behind him, Valdir stooped under the doorway, holding the doorjamb tight against the sway that seemed not to trouble Stefen. "Thanks," Stef called softly, as Valdir slid the door closed. "Loa, it's been too long, I keep not -"

"Cut it out before I cut it out of you. What you want?"

As she moved, Valdir heard a whisper like soft bells. She _had_ been resting, evidently, in a bed built into the cabin, swathed with silk cloths edged in gold. If she'd slept, it was in her boots and with a sword in arm's reach - a _fine_ sword, to his eye, a delicately crafted hilt and a dark, curved blade that he was willing to bet could cut moonlight. "But a moment of your time," asked Stefen. In the tiny cabin, they were close enough that Valdir could almost feel his muscles tensing.

"Time don't belong to me." _Could be a proverb, or a complaint._ She rolled from her bed and leaned lazily on one of its cornerposts.

In Haven, he might have taken Loa for a stagehand. She was dressed simply and all in black, long dark hair tied behind her head, and she moved with the quiet grace of the professionally invisible - a trait also shared by the best fencers he'd known. The semicircular dawn-at-horizon mark adorned her sun-dark brow; other than that now-familiar sign, her face was strange to him. He had never met an Ifteli on his travels, nor been present for any of their rare delegations to Haven. Even in border-towns like Cul Aber - where he'd noticed Hardornens, Rethwallanis, migrants from Valdemar's wartorn south, even a few traders from the Eastern Empire - Iftelis did not congregate. Why, after all, would an Ifteli leave her blessed heartland?

Her dark, wide-set eyes seemed perpetually seeking, narrowing as they settled on Valdir, moving on in boredom as he failed to offer any cause for interest. Stefen, however, seemed to have earned her attention for at least a moment. "What you need from the Morn?" she asked. Her voice was not strange at all - he would have guessed she was younger than Stefen, so given her father's long-established reputation in Cul Aber, Valdir realised she may have spent most of her life in the city.

"Not the Morn, Loa. I need your own eyes," Stefen explained. "We're looking for someone," and he nodded at Valdir. "Was meant to have come over from Hardorn of late. Can't find no trace of the man, but we found some effects of his for sale at market this morning. I not heard of anyone crossing the river since the snowmelt came pouring off the hills, but no one watches river business like you do."

"Your friend was in Hardorn?" She looked at Valdir sharply. "What was his place there?"

It seemed a strange question, and he wasn't sure how thoroughly to answer. "He was trading horses," Valdir dutifully provided Harri's cover. "He'd headed north from the crossing at Peltford."

She frowned. "So he wandered? Hardornens don't take so well to that. They think everyone has their place," and she laughed low at this absurdity. "They're born knowing what they are, where they are. Priest or warrior or artisan or usurer or slave. They say that to not know your place is to be damned." She smiled darkly at Stefen. "I hear traders say the priest class don't like them. But all priests like money," she shrugged, and then frowned thoughtfully. "Would he have brought any of his beasts back over the river?"

The question was like frigid water on his brain. "I don't know," Valdir answered truthfully, mind racing. _:Fandes,:_ he called. _:What about Thia? Did she die before or after Harren?:_

"I know a few ferrymen who can take a beast, if it's docile and the money's right," Loa told him. "Risk attracting attention, mind. It's that bit harder for the harbourmaster to look the other way."

 _:I don't know,:_ Yfandes replied. _:If they were in danger, perhaps they split up - unburdened, Thia could reach one of the fords further south faster than you might imagine -:_

Given the speeds at which Yfandes had borne him at times in the past, he was prepared to accept that. But - _:If they split up, then how did someone kill both of them? Who could even catch up with a Companion?:_

He felt her discomfort with his grim logic. _:So they must have killed Thia first.:_

Which, he knew, would have been difficult to accomplish. Maybe impossible for an assassin who had gone in believing Thia was merely a horse. More likely, someone had seen through Harri's cover and planned out Thia's death alongside Harri's own. He shook his head, feeling the parameters of the problem frustrate him, as if he were threading a needle with an unsteady hand. "I don't know either way, but if you've seen _anyone_ cross the river these last few days...?"

She put a finger to her lips, and chewed at its end. "If that's all you want to know? Then no, I've not seen anyone cross the river. And I keep enough of an eye out at night that if someone had sailed over, I would know."

"But?" asked Stefen, no more oblivious to the tilt of her words than Valdir was.

"I can tell you _nothing_ for nothing, fair's fair." She folded her hands in front of her. "You want to hear something strange, do you?" Valdir allowed himself to look curious without pleading. "I got something strange you might want to hear. But I want to know I can get something worth having in return."

"Oh come _on_ ," blustered Stefen. "I come here to deal with _you_ , not with the Morn. You know what I'm made of, and -"

"This ain't for you," Loa noted calmly. "I ain't trusting you with no one else's debts. You go your own way," she observed, and as Stefen's face twisted at the implication that he lacked fidelity, she crossed the cabin in a stride and opened a carved panel on the wall opposite her bed. She looked over her shoulder at Valdir, as if daring him to hold her eyes. "You don't deal with me without the Morn knowing you're good for what you owe us. So choose your weapon."

He looked into her startling collection of metalwork - vicious long knives, the curved swords the pirates favoured, the heavy longswords that had dogged his childhood, short spears with hooked heads, all polished to a sheen and set in their place in pairs. Even as he examined the rest he instinctively reached for a long, light rapier - exactly the kind of blade he worked best with. 

"No hesitation," she noted with respect. "Never mind I don't know your name..."

 _No, you don't._ He tested the blade's weight, finding it sound and comfortable in his hand. "Valdir," he answered - a Herald in deed, announcing the name of another. His grasp on his cover felt weak, his hands preoccupied. Valdir had never wielded a weapon before. Only music. Only lies. "So now you want to go ashore and fight me to prove I deserve your favour?"

Loa laughed at him.

  
  


"That one ain't so bad," Stefen claimed, his voice shaking. "Got some room to move about, at least."

Valdir leaned on his swordpoint on the jetty, watching the Morn clear the deck of the cargo barge moored up the jetty from the _Sunrise_. He found himself doubting Stefen's word - unladen, the boat pitched unsteadily as the pirates tossed ropes and tools into the corners of its open deck. "It's not where I would have chosen to fight a duel," he answered.

"She's chosen worse before now," Stefen assured him. He was already holding Valdir's tattered cloak, and he rearranged its folds with distracted delicacy. "You've fought a lot of duels?"

"None," he replied truthfully. He'd killed more than enough people to find the idea of using swords to resolve petty status squabbles abhorrent. Loa, evidently, had not. She sat on the jetty twenty paces away, sword over her folded knees, oblivious to Valdir's scrutiny. It was evident why she favoured fighting in small arenas - her poor reach would leave her vulnerable on a open field. "Has she much experience of war?"

"A city brawl now and then, they ain't pretty. Silona's got other enforcers, but he don't trust no one to give orders on land except Loa. Blood thicker than the river, even in this weather."

Valdir nodded. Exile sense; put your hands to work with anyone, but trust only your own. Being unable to set foot in Valdemar couldn't make it easy for Silona to trust his associates. "Any idea how she is at cut-and-run?"

"You think she'd give you a chance to challenge her at something she was bad at?" Stef asked, tapping his toe on the dock. "She learned that style from some fancy fencer on the run from Hardorn - he weren't no slave, so I bet he'd lost a wager he weren't good for. She got a lot of tricks from him, and then some. And she always throws in a few she shouldn't," Stefen informed him. "How about you? Where you learn to fight?" he asked.

The topic had never arisen for Valdir before, and he hadn't time to think of anything too far from the truth. "I, uh, grew up on a farm in western Valdemar, not so far from the Pelagirs. His lordship made sure all the boys of the manor learned to fight, because we saw bandits and strange beasts sometimes." Stefen's eyes widened. It wasn't _quite_ true - no magical beast had been seen in Forst Reach until years after he left. But it was convenient.

" _Hells_ ," muttered Stef. "And you're what, how old?"

"Thirty-one," he lied. He'd been groused at by enough of his peers about his face not showing his age. 

"Well, now I know how your hair turned so white. You survive Pelagir beasties and Karsites, Loa ain't gonna end you."

Valdir wasn't inclined to take his chances on that. He fed energy into his physical shields, and readied a spell-net to deploy should he fall. _I'm confident I can stop her from_ killing _me. But how far do I have to go to make her talk? Magic won't help me here. I haven't a choice but to play by her rules..._

"You just got to hold your own," Stefen told him, as if he'd voiced his worries aloud. "She's fast, but I dare say she never fought a real soldier. Only this kind of scum." Scum with river-legs and little better to do but fight each other over nothing - but Stefen nudged him, shoulder to shoulder, and the content of Stef's words was suddenly of little import. He felt his own frustration ripple _through_ Stefen and return to him as a steady, bright confidence.

He blinked. The water below their feet might as well have started flowing upriver; his emotions had shifted so smoothly he would never have noticed had he not _known_ of Stefen's Gift. _And_ they _don't know. Even you don't really_ know. _All anyone knows is, being close to you makes them feel powerful. Like they can do anything so long as you're on their side._

Loa rose to her feet as the pirates leapt from the tiny boat one by one. Valdir took his cue, and looked back at Stefen once as he followed her down the jetty, his sword already held at the defensive, his hand slack and ready to move. She stepped aboard with understated grace. Watching the boat rock beneath her light steps, Valdir swallowed hard and jumped aboard, and Loa turned to smile at him.

"Never hesitate," she told him. Advice, or a proposed common credo. She was too young to dispense wisdoms, so young that everything she'd done must have been accomplished by speed alone. _Gods, I've never fought anyone so tiny_ \- Loa was smaller than Jisa, and looked barely older. She manipulated the mooring-ropes with seasoned, easy hands, loosing knots, tightening them seconds later, hard stopping the boat's drift downriver. Valdir reflexively dropped into a crouch, his feet spreading for balance, unable to trust the water that Loa simply moved with. She hadn't twitched, hadn't given the least sign that she found it strange to be in an open-topped boat in a raging river, now roped about twice her height away from the jetty.

_She's in her element._

She drew her sword, and trod the boards to the far end of the boat, a bare fifteen feet from him. Valdir clutched his rapier, shifted on his feet to find his equilibrium - and as she turned, he felt the deck below him rise in the water, his only warning as she sprang at him. A flying step, her body but a counterweight to her blade.

He dodged aside. It had been a dangerous blow to not land, and he countered clumsily with the boat rocking under him. She wasn't where he thought she was - too small, too used to the motion. It was all he could do to catch her next blow.

He drove her back with forceful parries - he had to. Her attacks had little force, but the speed alone could have driven him into the river. She sprang back, sending the boat rocking before she lunged again. He barely evaded her, and he felt the wind kiss his ribs where her blade had brushed his shirt. 

The boat swayed so hard its edge skimmed the water, and his eyes swam with its motion - focusing on any fixed point would have been fatal. The _Winter Sunrise_ rose up and down in his vision, a pack of jeering sailors crowding on its decks. A few more had joined Stefen on the jetty. The ship headed upward in his eyes as Loa rose from her crouch, and he saw movement belowdecks - a shadow behind a thick glass window, a flickering flame.

He hadn't time to think more on it. _Just hold her_ , he repeated to himself, finding his balance and driving her back with his blade. _Her speed - her_ lack _of hesitation - will wear her down._

He parried her next blow, cutting back toward her feet, and Loa leapt away from him, landing with a thump that shook through his bones. Their eyes met as he lunged towards her. She almost recovered - almost - and he felt her blade give under his own. _Your strength's gone -_

She slipped aside, ducked under his attempt to trap her. Gods, but being so _small_ made her infuriatingly hard to pin down. She circled him, testing his reach with her swordpoint - and her eyes widened.

Valdir felt the raucous pirates fall silent behind him. He glanced at the _Sunrise_ , and saw them part aside on the deck, pulling themselves into unsteady salutes. Loa raised a perfunctory hand. Stefen was frozen in place, as if in dreamlike paralysis, Valdir's cloak clutched in his pale knuckles.

Hands touched the ornate rail above the Sunrise's deck. Long hands gloved in calfskin; arms draped in folds of gold-edged silk. "Daughter, I saw you were taking the measure of this man," Silona said. He spoke slowly, with a lilt that Loa lacked.

She lowered her sword. "He's done well." She spoke carefully, with just a drip of teenage condescention, admitting nothing to either of them. _I almost had you_ , he knew now.

"What does he want of us?"

"My eyes," explainied Loa. "I don't give them away." She was wearing the blankly respectful look known by every child who had ever had to mouth back an elder's platitudes. Silona stepped down on to the jetty, glancing up at the sky as if in warning to the sun itself. _Testing his bonds_ \- Silona must often promenade the liminal lip of Cul Aber's harbour, and knew these splinters of Valdemar were safe for him, but who would trust he knew the rules of gods or demons?

Stefen turned to salute him, his shaking hand dropping Valdir's cloak to the boards. "Captain Silona."

"Truceman," replied Silona. "You vouched for this man? You know him?" Stefen didn't reply.

"He done well," Loa repeated, lifting her swordpoint to gesture at Valdir; he took a step back from the quiverring bladepoint. "I sooner he be on our side too -"

"Stefen's on no one's side," Silona noted.

Stef hesitated, and once again Valdir wondered at the implicit threat held over him here. That edge of fear he created. As if at any moment, they might be driven to swarm and suffocate him. "No one owns me," Stefen told him softly, and Silona smiled as if this statement were absurd. 

"You thought your word enough for the Morn. All words, never any light - I know your way. Loa, where favours are cheap and loyalty of value, I find strength is not measure enough." He stared at Valdir with narrowed eyes, as if with menace he could unmask his worth and his agenda. "This wasn't a test," he declared, and without his eyes leaving Valdir's he backhanded Stefen hard in the stomach, sending him reeling into the river.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW

Loa moved first.

In the thoughts-breadth it took Valdir to react, Loa grabbed a coil of rope from the deck and dived into the Culway, piercing the water as Stefen surfaced, thrashing and screaming. She cut the current like an arrow. She might intercept Stefen - but Valdir had no time nor tolerance for _might_ and he threw his spell-net out into the water. Stefen slammed into the magical barrier, held in its lattice as the water slipped through. Valdir _pulled_ it, feeling Stefen's movements weakening in shock - _Hold on. Hold on_ \- and Loa surfaced beside him, threading her arms about Stefen's body.

The rope unspooled into the water, sinking under its weight and inertia. Valdir grasped it, and its momentum jerked at his body, making the whole vessel list dangerously. He braced his feet against its hull. Even fighting the water it didn't take long to reel Loa back in; she kicked hard, Stefen tight in her arms. Valdir tugged her hand over hand back towards him.

He held the line with raw fingers as Loa grabbed the edge of the hull, Stefen lifting weak arms to meet his own. Loa shoved him up as Valdir hoisted the dead weight of him aboard. Stef raised himself on one weak elbow, spitting water back into the Culway. Valdir crouched over his body, blood rushing to his head. He dared a little more of his scant reserves of magic - he daren't not - and he clutched Stefen's shoulders with hands that radiated an unnatural warmth.

He held Stefen as Loa waved to her crew. He felt the boat shift - sailors pulling at the mooring-ropes to bring them back close to the jetty. Someone threw Valdir a length of tattered cloth - his own cloak, discared before Loa had fought him. He murmured thanks, and threw it over Stefen's body. Valdir's skin throbbed, chilled and tense from proximity to the river's madness. 

He stood, eyes searching for Silona.

Silona watched from the prow of his flagship, staring at Loa as she wrung out her hair. She looked back at him. The current between them, Valdir would not have braved at any tide. It was the worst moment to witness on any battlefield; the silent threadsnap of a soldier deciding that their commanding officer is a dangerous fool.

He waited for the inevitable recoil; one of them must raise the first word in their defence. 

Loa would never let another strike first. "What the fuck, you think of what we lose if Stef goes down?"

Silona shrugged lazily. "Sink or swim, what is he to me?"

"Fucksakes, without Stef we got no song truce, and without truce, Morn got nothing but the river. You want to back to living shore to shore? No dropping anchor at Lighthouse Market, no trade with the Duchess? It was a whole other city, you even remember? Cul Aber were all blood and scum fore Stef came home."

"The city, child? I've never been there," Silona reminded her, and he stepped down into the _Sunrise_ 's depths. 

  
  


He faced the door of Loa's cabin, feeling the _Sunrise_ strain with the ebb of the water. The belowdecks air felt stale. Stefen shifted in Loa's bunk, stretching chilled limbs; unbeknownest to him, there was a warming-spell set on the bed. Stef wasn't hurt, save for a rapidly blooming bruise that Valdir had seen through a shirt turned close to transparent - _but the shock alone could have killed him._

There was a feverish vigilance that always came upon him when someone near him had brushed close to death. Like combat, a focus close to madness. Perhaps there was no other way to watch over someone at the border between your own and your enemies. 

And however many years he'd spent defending Valdemar with his life, seeing _senseless_ violence - play and pettiness with someone's life - would always disturb him. The sword rested in his hands, swaying a counter-rhythm to the shifting water.

"You surprised me," murmured Stefen. His voice was shaky, but carried an odd pride. "Figured you could fight a bit...wouldn't have sworn you could hold Loa on t'river. Remind me not to wager 'gainst you."

"You don't gamble."

"How you know that?" Stefen grunted.

"I'm starting to understand you." 

It was an instinct born of that same fever. Visions from a border. Snatching a man from death would always make one seem to know them.

 _You treasure every last detail, even the ones you shouldn't be able to see._ The posessiveness of it made him feel all the more mad - _because it's you, and I would have been lost here without you. The streets are yours - they're your tamed beast that should have eaten me alive - and now_ I _am keeping watch for you._

What you watched over, _had_ to be your own.

Stefen's low laugh was broken by a gale of coughs, and Valdir dared to turn his head. Stef's pale face lay in a shaft of sunlight from Loa's window. His hair fanned on her pillows in dull, flat clumps. "You might be. S'true, I don't like to bank on nothing I can't control."

"Makes two of us." _And yet._

"And yet you trusted me," Stefen wondered, and Valdir's stomach dropped like ballast lead.

 _With nothing. There's nothing in me to trust with. Not so much as a name to swear on._ "I was right to do so. You brought me here at your own peril," he replied, his level voice belaying the currents that ran under him. "Why did he do it? Is he really so angry about his fences getting arrested?" 

"Ain't no use asking," Stefen said. "I don't chase no reasons of Silona's, or anyone else's -"

"Why not?" Valdir challenged. "It's not because you don't know, is it? It's because you _do_ know." 

Stefen was still as the _Sunrise_ strained in the roiling water. "Yeah, I do know. I know it's always my own fault. I come by evil through my own mistakes. I think too much on that, I couldn't do aught."

There was more truth in those words than he could bear to think on.

Stefen turned in the narrow, hard bunk until he faced the sun. Light bleached his closed eyelids to a porcelain white. _How old are you?_ he wondered, unsure when the tough young man had become a sleeping child, as if his youth had been smuggled past the border gate, hidden in a wad of sunlight. "What mistake?" Valdir asked softly. He held Loa's sword straight down, heedless of the scratches he was cutting into the polished wood of her cabin's floor.

"I got between the two of them, and he ain't forgiven me for it. I owed Loa a favour - a _hella_ favour, and I wanted it off my back. She was a kid, then - set to fight me bare-handed in a rowboat, but I up and told her all my worth was songs and words, and I sang her a sail-home shanty fit to make the river weep. I swore I'd sing like that to whoever she needed me to." His words were muffled, as if he had turned his face away. "Loa knew I was from Scale land, so she asked me to take her to Lighthouse Market - her! You imagine, a face anyone would know even _without_ them marks, walking Scale streets with her?"

Valdir bit his lip, remembering a border. Remembering what it felt like to draw fire.

"I were scared as hell, but I figured I had to do it. If I could talk _her_ down from a fight, could do same on anyone. Talking to them or singing for them...I can take the fight out of them, even easier than making pain go away. And she could have pulled me in on something fair awful, but all she wanted was a walk downtown - and why not! Not her fault Silona sooner torch Lighthouse Market than go trade there. Took some talking to make it happen - telling toughs to put their knives back down, because she weren't starting nothing and did they really want the Morn on their heads? After that jaunt, I started hearing from other people who wanted to get places they shouldn't be. Was just a coin here or there at first, but Polly got me figured - all kinds of types stopping by the market. She remembered me, was the funny thing. Used to see me there when I was younger." _When you were -_ He pictured a child growing up in those riverside smokerooms. _Your life really couldn't have been more different from mine,_ he thought painfully.

"Poll had some words with Loa, then she tells me she wants to meet with Silona. It was like she gave me my chance to knock a hole through the walls. I didn't like people's marks being something that trapped them in a corner. Wasn't right with me. Wanted to see people go as they please, whatever ink someone stuck them with."

"So that's how you made the song truce?"

"I just got them to the river. They both wanted each other dead, but I figured out what things they wanted _more_ than they wanted each other dead." _That, there, is the very essence of negotiation_ , Valdir marvelled. "She came right in here with me, and I sang while the Duchess and the Captain talked it out. No one quite remembers what they said no more," he smiled. "They came out of it saying people should go as they want, buy goods wherever they want. It all works better now," he observed. "Silona even ask Poll if it's safe to leave the harbour, sometimes. She don't lie to him, either."

 _You're unbelievable._ "And you count that a _mistake_?" He could sense Stef's pride, however bruised.

Stef sniffed. "Bit of peace that won't last, and Silona after me for his daughter's straying hither-tither along the riverside?" He coughed again, the river still trapped in his lungs. "I don't know. I made a bit of coin for a lot of worry."

"Loa said there'd be blood in the streets without you -"

"Got news for you," Stefen noted, and Valdir's eyes cast down, remembering the sight of the withered Dotrid. Under his feet, he felt the whole vessel strain again. The pieces of Stefen's stories mingled in his mind. Light and music, blood and stone, all swept into the same current.

 _Harri's blood_ , and the deck lurched under him. 

The door swung open and he brought his blade into a guard, but Loa raised her empty hands as she stepped inside. She kicked the door closed behind her. "I ain't going to try you again." He complied, frankly glad to be granted her amnesty. Loa's tunic clung damp and heavy against her body, and her face bore a bruised expression that hinted she'd sooner be alone. "You were _good_ ," she noted, as if that were all that mattered.

"I hesitated," Valdir admitted, eyes still searing with the image of her leaping for the river, hawk-dive swift through the air.

"Was it you my father was testing?" She swung onto the edge of her bunk, and shook Stefen's shoulder. "You done shivering yet?"

"Barely started," Stefen informed her, but he sat up gingerly, tucking in his clothes. He retrieved his tunic from where he'd laid it beside his body; with a little magical assistance, it had dried out enough to wear. "You been having words with him?"

"One or two," she replied. While Stefen rested, Vanyel had heard Silona shouting and muttering below. Loa, he'd heard not at all, and her quietness had somehow seemed more troubling. "He never been to Cul Aber?" she glowered. "Well, _I_ never set foot in Iftel. Left as a babe in arms." A comeback she thought of too late to make use of? It showed her youth, with all its ferocity and stickled loyalties. Stefen was watching her warily, as if being near her furthered his error.

Valdir couldn't afford to tread gingerly about her deck any longer. "You know something about what happened to Harri - my friend," he said.

She shook her head. "Wish I did. Two nights ago, was like the river turned my head around. Was that vicious rainy night, remember?" Stefen nodded, and it took Valdir a moment to also feign his recognition, as he had supposedly spent that night under the same clouds as they had. "I was up on deck past midnight, and sober as a nun," she stressed. "And I saw lights dancing downriver. Oh, _don't_ you ask," she sighed at Stefen's sceptical expression. "I hit myself upside the head enough times. It was _dark_ over south - Lighthouse Market already packed up, if Poll had the lanterns out at all. But on the north side, there were lights moving on the river. I figured it was some fool got his boat swept out into the old harbour after one too many, and I went north along the wall to take a look at him. But I never saw a ship. Only light, and some hellish rough water."

 _:Tran,:_ he called, and relayed her words while they were fresh in his mind, leaving the contact open so Tantras could hear anything else he might hear. "What kind of light?" he asked.

She hesitated. "Could have thought it was just a few lanterns from up here. Looked strange when I got close - white lights, red lights, moving about in the old north harbour. There was barely any moon that night," she added, bristling at Stefen's incredulous expression. "I ain't trying to play you a fool," she insisted.

"I taught you that song," Stef said quietly. "About the will-o'-wisp, the hell-light draws boats astray?"

"I _saw_ it," she glowered. "You don't see things made up for songs."

"I do lately," Stef's voice wavered upward. "I seen a _Herald_ out on the streets, and you seen the will-o'-wisp, or something right like. What if everything from songs just washes up here sometimes -"

"You're hysterical," Loa said flatly. "All I see washed up is trouble," and she scowled sidelong at Valdir. "Stef, you need out of here. Next time he throws you in, not sure I can catch you. Maybe he won't let me. Damn lucky you got caught on something that time. Tree fallen under the dock, or something?"

Stefen shook his head at her slowly. Vanyel had seen that reaction often enough before; _magic intrudes, and they try to piece together their perceptions of the impossible._ It never quite worked.

"Anyway, you got to get abovedecks. There's this kid throwing stones at the prow," Loa continued. "Thyll was going to throw a grapeshot back, but the kid said she needed to talk to you."

"Huh, who'd be wanting to -"

"Not you," Loa corrected him. " _You,_ " she nodded at Valdir.

  
  


Valdir stepped down from the ship, and felt himself sway on his toes; Stefen looked up at him and grinned. "Morn got a lot to say about knock-kneed land rats -" He broke off suddenly, staring up towards the wall.

A group of uniformed watchmen were looking down at them.

Stefen grabbed his arm and nonchalantly ambled up the quay, glancing along to the next one to the north of them. No barges were moored there; it was empty save for a few children slinging stones across the river - certainly it offered no cover. Valdir felt unbalanced on his feet, and Stef's shivers were hard enough to rattle his bones. 

Near the steps up to the wall, Stefen dropped low, dragging Valdir with him so fast he almost fell over his feet. He toyed with his bootlaces, head low - and he pursed his lips to whistle a note so high that Valdir barely even heard it.

From amid the crowd of watchmen, he heard a dog bark. On the quay, a child turned - a pale young girl - and she scrambled from her perch to run toward them. On the path along the wall, she ran in an inch of water; it would have soaked her shoes rotten if she'd been wearing any.

"Need your boots shined, mister Stefen?" she asked as she neared them, grinning so angelically that Valdir knew she had seen exactly how Stefen had most recently got his boots wet. She looked Hardornen, perhaps seven or eight years old, and Valdir wouldn't have liked to fight her for a penny, nor take her on in a game of japes.

"Rayet," Stef greeted her uneasily. "I heard someone wanted a word in Valdir's ear. Mayhap it's about your friends up there above the harbour -"

She spat. " _My_ friends would cut their guts out and throw 'em in the river."

"I knew I was one of your friends," Stefen replied softly; nevertheless, she cupped her palm and twitched her fingers in a mercenary gesture. "Spill," he demanded. "I know _you_ always knows what's what."

She crossed her arms and grinned cockily. "There's a big man in town, some kind of _tija_. He told the watchmen to make trouble with the market-men. Tassa says they must want more money from the Morn," she shrugged. "Now they're looking for a man who tried to buy a stolen ring. Must've belonged to someone important..." She looked up at Valdir, eyes bright and wily, and Stefen cut her off with a shake of his hand.

He reached into his damp pocket, and Valdir glanced a clutch of silver. "Here, and _stay away from them_ ," he hissed. "Don't think you're safe." Rayet snorted, reaching for his hand, and he pulled it back as she touched it. "I mean it. They don't look at you and see someone born here - they just see something they can sell for easy money. These thin times won't end when the river goes down, and one day, you'll be in the wrong place when they get greedy." She sniffed, and Stefen opened his palm to allow her to snatch her silver. He added something else, in rapid Hardornen, and she frowned thoughtfully as she hurried away.

 _:Tantras,:_ he thought frantically as he turned away from Stefen's searching gaze. _:Who set the watchmen on me?:_

Tantras responded with shock and a flash of indignation, and Vanyel relayed the child's information to him even as Stefen leaned into his ribs. "We're going to walk right up near them like we don't think nothing of it, right?" From here, they had little choice; it was that or the river. "Then we split south, and you follow me." Stefen squeezed his hand - his fingers still so cold - and Valdir dared to look in his eyes. He saw a knife-edge light, a dangerous certainty and commitment. _You can't afford truth, and when you see a threat, you can't hesitate._

 _:Van,:_ Tantras sounded near-frantic. _:The captain said he 'broadened the his investigation' -:_

 _:He wants a scapegoat who's not with a gang. Preferably not from the city,:_ Vanyel conveyed the obvious as he trod the creaking wooden boards at Stefen's shoulder, even as he wondered _why_ it was obvious. _Why do they want to blame an outsider?_

A knotted plank bowed under his foot. Closer. The nearest watchman looked straight at him.

_:Tran, can't you call them off?:_

Stefen bolted before he'd completed the thought, and Valdir was fast on his tail, feet slipping as they leapt to the path that ran south along the river, scraping his body against the wall. He ran on, boots splashing through the high water, hearing footsteps thunder behind them. They ran past the next quay, and another. Tantras's mind found his again, their connection shaky. _:With or without blowing your cover?:_

Valdir grimaced. _:I'm not sure what it's still worth,:_ he answered as Stefen veered unexpectedly up the quay, into the river. His feet realised why almost before his eyes did; the path ahead became a stair that led only back upwards, and he saw movement atop the wall, men rushing to cut them off, as Stefen slowed and stepped into a moored boat. He ran daintily toward its prow, arms spread as it rocked violently under his feet, and he looked back to Valdir before he leapt.

Stefen barely reached his goal - a long barge moored from the next quay, heavily laden and low to the river, and he cleared its edge in the company of a torrent of water. Valdir gasped, and as he felt the pursuers nearing he wove magic, an unseeable anchor steadying the tiny vessel as he ran to its far edge. He jumped, and Stefen grabbed his hand before his feet had touched the deck, scrambling and pulling him over the barge's canvas roof, onward and upriver. "Not safe yet," he called as they ran. "They'll come down the southmost harbour stair - less we get away first -"

Valdir heard shouting behind - doubtless they'd reached the same conclusion. He realised he knew where Stef was going, and he followed - bolder this time, unfazed by the shaky paths of rotting wood, even now that suspect floor was under inches of rushing water. _:Tran,:_ he pleaded, hearing voices behind - above - a frantic regrouping. _:If they don't stop this madness -:_

 _:Not much I can do unless you're willing to let them arrest you,:_ he replied, with the grimness that came from seeing something slip from your control. _:Speaking of, I did get them to show me Stefen's record.:_

Stefen was getting ahead of him. They'd reached the path by the foot of the stair - the route ahead running shaky and fragmented and finally out. _:Tell me,:_ he urged.

_:Wasn't much of a record, but it's the blank spots I'm starting to notice. The southerly watch-post took him in once for vagrancy. That was five years ago, and there's nothing said about a punishment - only 'Not known of Valdemar.':_

The words dropped through murky water. He scrabbled, grasping half of a truth before it slipped from his grip. 

Valdir drew in a breath of chill air, and leapt up from the dock to the stone ledge of the wall. 

His boots squelched, soles bleeding water; ahead, Stefen was moving faster than should have been possible, and Valdir mimicked his stooped posture, his hands spidered against the wall. They were putting distance from their pursuers, but for how long? Wasn't it obvious where they were headed? But he couldn't think of a better place to shed a tail but the Lighthouse Market. _Any_ truth could get lost in those coloured lights.

No. It was too early, he knew it as soon as they'd rounded the curve and could see the misshapen pier. No fires lit, the crowd merely a clutch of sad smokers; the sun barely touched the mountains far over the city. Stefen jumped atop the stones and crouched on the rough ground, turning to watch Valdir reach him. He was still as a statue - wet hair clumped to his face, scarf trailing in the river as his hands rested flat on stones torn from the jagged edge of his city.

He reached for Valdir's hands again. Cold, gripping hard, rising to his feet and pulling Valdir toward the market's hollow depths. No time to linger by the water. The caverns were barely lit, and no more populated than the dreary jetty. _There's nowhere to hide, it's too small, they'll be watching every exit_ \- "Where's Poll," muttered Stefen, turning through the cavern, tugging curtains this way and that. One revealled a sleeper, a groaning drunk. "Polly!" Stefen hissed.

Valdir felt steel at his back.

He spun on raw instinct, kicking his attacker and moving to retaliate before he knew what he'd done or remembered he was unarmed. "Fuck," hissed the young man clutching his knees on the floor. "Fuck - what's you - Stef, you -"

"You _watch_ who you pull a knife on, Jorry," and Stefen slapped Valdir's shoulder. Not-so-harmless Valdir. Valdir, reputable duellist and brawler, fugitive from the law - _and a long way out of my hands_. "Where's Poll?"

"I heard you."

The suddenness of Duchess Polly's appearance - a hand to her head in feined delicacy, a silk robe draped loose around her body - was Valdir's one comfort; somewhere nearby, she had a means to disappear within the spider-nest of tunnels. Not to hide from trouble; trouble had only summoned her, ready to milk and trade whatever she could. 

"What brings you in such a tearing damn hurry to my duchy so _awful_ early of a morning?" she continued, a knifepoint in her voice.

"Polly," Stefen pleaded. "All I done for you, and I don't need nothing but a place to hole up from the law -"

"The law? I can't fucking believe you," she hissed. "You spend years telling me you won't do nothing to make trouble with the law, and now you -"

"I don't got time to explain." He was swaying, a hand to the wall of the tunnel as if still lurching with the floodwater. The poise he'd had had mere hours ago was gone. Valdir thought of his first sight of Stefen - the easy, feline balance he kept as he stalked across a filigree canopy of temporary alliances. Silona had somehow sent them crashing through that delicate net.

Polly strode angrily through the maze of tunnels, jerking her head for them to follow. He heard soft sounds close by - the night's first tenants at the Lighthouse Market, doubtless paying by the hour. She paused to listen, and then pulled back a bright patterned curtain - Valdir could only be glad that no one occupied the tiny space behind. "Anyone asks me or mine, he's a sailor I seen around and he's paying you. Make it convincing," she added nastily, and Stefen pulled him into the dim space as she walked away.

He slid the curtain closed behind them, leaving them alone in a stone hollow barely five feet deep.

Valdir had nowhere to look but at the floor, which was littered with pillows and soft fabric throws. A thin shaft of lanternlight filtered through the curtains, flickering the colours of each panel of cloth. His eyes adjusted even as Stefen discarded half his clothing, scattering boots and breeches, cloak and tunic on the ground, his shirt and scarf still trailing down his body. "Got to be ready for a show," he explained. "She's right about that much. Have your trews off, at least."

The lanterns outside shook, sending Stefen's shadow scampering about the rockface. Valdir loosened his clothes. He was shaking and sweating, the stress of their escape wearing its way through his body. Oh gods, _whose_ body? What was he now, some sailor? He stripped to the skin in moments - remaining half-clad like Stefen would have felt somehow _more_ obscene.

Stefen's arms caught around his shoulders, drawing him down to the floor. Soft feathery pillows and silk drank up his sweat and grated gentle on his aching nerves. Stef was almost still, an ear pressed close to the earth. Listening for footfalls - His eyes flickered, and he pulled Valdir close, trailing blue silk about their bodies as he kissed him.

Modesty deserted him. It cowered in some low place far away, perhaps alongside his name.

They kissed slow and open-mouthed, Stefen's legs catching his in a loose embrace, chill and soft from water. It was enough to make him feel he could melt into the floor. Somewhere beyond he heard the thud of footsteps and a rumble of voices - raised, arguing, Polly's unmistakeable tones declaring something unintelligible. Every muscle told him to run or hide or at least free his hands to weave illusion; he froze, shaking, and Stefen pulled closer and grabbed at a sheet behind him, pulling it over their heads.

Everything narrowed - no sound but breathing, nothing to see but Stefen's face close against his. His senses no longer mattered. It was like being in combat, where fear and awareness came together into perfect focus, complete ability to act. Nothing - no name, no dignity - would come between him and survival. He raised his head only to draw air, and saw the shadow of a man through two layers of cloth. He turned his face on reflex and kissed Stefen again, pressing them together, feeling silk caught between their bodies.

He heard the rattling twitch of the brass curtain-rings, and cold air washed over them.

Someone spat on the stone floor outside, and the footsteps moved on.

They stayed close and unmoving for long seconds. Valdir opened his eyes, and he sat slowly upright, the veil falling languidly away from him. No one had lingered to watch them; he pulled the curtain back closed. Stefen looked up at him from the floor, still lying on his back. His eyes were the dark green of the stones beneath the river, and without a touch or a word, Valdir was pulled back down into their swell.

Their next kiss was harder and impossibly closer, tongues lapping together far inside his mouth. They moved apart to breathe. "Convincing enough?" Stefen whispered.

"For them or for you?" he replied. _Did I play my part well, good sir? Oh, gods - if it's come to this, I can't keep lying._ "Wait," he continued, before Stefen could reply, slipping his hand between their bodies, pressing him away. "There's - I have to tell you -"

" _Spare me_ ," whispered Stefen, and he shook his head. "You don't tell me nothing. My rule is, I only do this with strangers."

"I only do this with friends." The truth spilled out unexpected, and Stef smiled at him, wide and wry; Valdir gasped as if the tide had broken over them and left him breathless, far adrift from who he _should_ be, what Stefen _should_ mean, what they should be doing. _I'm a stranger._ Just a body in a whorehouse, for a man who didn't so much as know his name. _He doesn't_ want _my name, my reputation, my history. He wants...me._

The thought shocked him, even as Stefen's thigh brushed over his hard cock and he whispered, "So we can't. Couldn't ever do this." 

_Except now._ He wanted it. They wanted the unthinkable. Where they touched, he could feel the dark edges of Stefen's lust - a deep shadow in him, a _fear_ of knowing another that defied simple understanding. But the shadows seemed further out of reach with each breath, no longer mattering. He didn't know when he'd last wanted anything so much. 

Their kisses wandered, lips making their way down his neck. Stef stretched out a knowing hand into the pillows piled against the wall. From some cranny in the rockface, he produced a wooden box. Inside were the expected brothel accoutrements; waxed linen sheaths for careful women, tools for the deviant, a bottle of oil. "How you want to do this?"

He didn't even have to think twice. There was nothing on his mind any more except the hard cock pressed against him. He ran his hands down Stefen's body, reaching between them. Stef's penis was hot in his hand, and with the satisfying swell of it resting on his palm his thumb explored the head, shifting the soft skin over it. That made Stef gasp, and he slipped down the hollow as he touched, knees sliding across the sheets beneath them. He bent low to kiss Stefen more intimately, lips wrapping tight around his warm head, and the young man drew in a ragged breath. "Fuck, you this nice to all your whores?"

He raised his head. "Long time since I last took a whore," he admitted, and he fought the urge to laugh at the thought of the absurd task that young woman had set herself to on the night of his fifteenth birthday. He discarded the memory, favouring this fantasy within a fantasy; an impossibly beautiful young man spread under him like a welcoming shore, just _wanting_ him, his cock so ready for him, and asking what he wanted in return. It was more than he'd dared ask for in so many years. _I shouldn't be -_

He lowered his lips slowly down Stefen's cock, and with every inch he felt a ripple of Stef's pure pleasure. Stef gasped and writhed under him, and he felt a surprisingly steady hand stroke at his face. "Say what you want," Stef insisted.

He'd never been good at answering, and it had been so long since anyone had asked. "I want you inside me," he whispered when he next paused to breathe.

Stefen flashed a smile, lit bright with filtered lanternlight. He sat upright, taking Valdir's face in his hands and kissing his lips, his chin, his throat, as he pressed him slowly down on his back in their soft hideaway. The cork squeaked out from the bottle of oil; an unmistakable cue to raise his knees. A moment later Stefen's mouth touched the base of his cock, teasing with his tonguetip while he set about demonstrating exactly how deft his oiled hands were.

"Long time since you last had a friend?" Stef asked softly, in a moment of respite from toying with the tightness inside him. 

"Yes -" _Or I never - Valdir's not_ me _, he's never been loved, never been touched like this -_ Stef's lips wrapped around his cock, and he tried, failed, not to moan out loud at the careful sucking and fingering when Stefen began to sing.

The low sound distracted him - a discord, humming around a mouthful of his cock. Barely an extra tickle, a party trick - but then Stefen's fingers turned inside him and he gasped, feeling a strange, numb pleasure. _His song. I can't feel the least discomfort. All I can feel is him touching me and wanting me..._ He felt the sound pass right through him, falling right through to the stone, and wherever it touched him, he felt... _completely desired._

Stefen was still singing low, wordless notes as he withdrew his questing hand, leaving him aching with lust, pulse beating to the music that lingered inside him. _Please._ Stefen's voice rang free about the stone enclosure while Valdir watched him oil his cock. He fell silent only as he reached an arm about Valdir and slid slowly inside him.

And it had been far too long since he'd felt this.

Slow, the sensation building into something too much, too right, to exist in the false world he'd spun around them. Stefen looked down at him as they moved, and Vanyel wrapped his legs hard around him and looked back into strange eyes, hard green-brown eyes. He'd never, _ever_ done _this._ Not been fucked by a man who didn't know his name. _I'm a perfect stranger, staring out at you from inside a friend who never was._ Each move - each smooth, skilled, rhythmic stroke - was as to pound his illusory self into specks of light and dust. His head fell back on the pillows and he moaned low as Stefen fucked that nameless, desperate stranger, head ducking to kiss his neck _hard_ , hard enough to bruise him. To mark him. Briefly, only until he was gone.

As Stefen thrust into him, his eyes flicked from closed to open. The stray scarf was falling away, silk shifting over his back as he arced upwards; Vanyel felt out the dark bruise that still showed through his shirt, at the side of his thin ribcage. Stef's hand closed around Vanyel's cock, grasping delicately as he moved deep in his body, catching the rhythm of the song that was fading into his memory - Stefen's song, which had made his body feel so perfect. So wanted. He reached up his arms and Stefen murmured, "Oh, Valdir," and Vanyel clutched him in sudden, helpless rage. _Why must I share you with someone who doesn't exist? Why am I a stranger?_

The desolation led him into ecstasy. 

He pulled Stefen into him as every inch of his body shook with the force of his pleasure, felt Stef gasp and list against him only moments later. Slowly, Stefen rolled onto the floor, a tangle of limbs and linen and silk. 

Vanyel sat up slowly, and looked down at his lover curled beside him. The scarf had fallen under him, forgotten, and his shirt had ridden up above the shadow on the side of his torso. For the first time, he saw it clear. Not a wound. Not a bruise. Words and numbers, black Hardornen script on his skin. Like the red-lit girls on the beach. Marks that meant less than a person, less than a name.

He tried to understand, and Stefen looked back at him coldly.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Somewhat NSFW

He reached. His shaking hand spread over chill skin, five fingertips atop five marks, and Stefen jerked away like like he'd been burned.

Stef rose to a crouch and turned back a corner of the curtain, watching the forgotten outside world. That sublime pulse between them had slipped out of rhythm. It felt like rended cloth; the warmth of their lovemaking ripped open between them. His underbelly still throbbed with disjointed satisfaction. He was so aware of his body that his thoughts were hard to find.

_I actually can't remember my name. That's impressive._

"Coast's clear?" he asked.

Stefen looked back to him with shuttered eyes. "As a bell," he replied. "Clear as midday and still water. No lawmen, just a few smokers and dicers and the like." _And you. And me._ His eyes met Vanyel's, distant as passing stars. "And soon enough, one of two things going to happen - either it gets crowded around here, or Poll tells me I owe her a favour. Could be both." He gathered his discarded clothes, and dressed as rapidly as he'd undressed.

Vanyel took his cue to do the same. "How do we get out?" he asked, pulling his damp-edged cloak over his shoulders.

Something flashed through Stefen's eyes, and Vanyel cursed himself - _I still need your aid, I'm still_ using _you_ \- "Ask Polly and hers. They got ways to get someone gone from these digs unobserved. I'll be making my way." The curl of Stef's lips was almost like an afterthought. "You fancy to come get your things sometime, you know where I live -"

"Wait -" He reached out to take Stefen's arm, and it spun away from his touch. "Am I a stranger to you, now?" 

As soon as he spoke the words he regretted them. Stefen's eyes filled with hurt. "No one plays with me," he hissed. "I know what you saw."

The pieces were locking into place in his mind. Stefen's wariness of knowing him, his eschewing of loyalty and antipathy to belonging. The distance he kept - _seeing_ and trust were opposites, intimacy beyond him. And the warnings he'd given. "No -" Vanyel surged through the curtains after him as Stefen disappeared, his bare feet slipping on the trail left by Stefen's damp shoes. His steps were disjointed, his hips jarred by pleasure. "Stef - please -"

"Nought to say," Stef snapped. Far down the tunnels, two curious gamblers looked toward them from their alcove - a keen audience for the first lover's quarrel of the night. Poppy smoke and sex-scents wafted on silk nearby, carried by a biting draught. He heard dice click on stone. Stefen pulled his thick woolen cloak close around himself, raising the hood over his head, hissing his words as he went. "I know how it goes. I never wait around to sing out the last verse of this."

"Then _listen_ -" Somehow, that drove Stefen to look back at him, but in truth he had no idea how to use that moment that he'd won on insistence. "Stef, I saw nothing that would turn me away from you -"

"You're blind."

"Blind, and a stranger perhaps," he replied. "And I don't know a thing about this city but what you told me - that _no mark should trap you here._ " He knew words would be useless or worse, and Stefen shrank back into the stone behind him, the ricochet logic creasing him between the eyes. 

Words wouldn't bridge that rift. Words wouldn't build trust where there could be none. Stefen seemed not to breathe, and Vanyel took a careful step closer and slowly reached for Stefen's hands.

Stef flinched away from him, and ran until he'd turned out of sight. Vanyel froze, stumbled after, and where the tunnels branched, he looked either way to no avail. He sagged against the wall. _I can trace his aura. I could run him down -_

Black ink danced in his vision, and he breathed hard. _That won't change how he feels_ , and he wrenched inside at the thought of what he'd felt in that last fleeting clasp of his hands. No, Stefen was gone, save for the indelible phantom of his touch - a tingle at his lips, a black shudder in his hand.

  
  


Vanyel found Valdir's boots exactly where he'd left them. A stranger's boots. Whatever Valdir now was had shaped around Stefen like a cloak. He didn't _know_ the city otherwise, and nor did it know him. _I came here for Harren_ \- and so often had one thing in his life trickled into another. He'd found his level here in Cul Aber's gutter.

He shook himself. What did any of it mean to him? They'd shared an evening, then a day, then a fumble. That was all. Had it been such a mistake? _Yes._ He hadn't exactly had time to think before acting. _I've always worked best on impulse, even as Valdir -_ but if he was defining what they'd done - the sense of it still heavy in his muscles, aching at places he'd forgotten how to ache - as _work_ , he was far, far gone from any hope of looking himself in the eye any time soon.

How long had he been away from himself? Not yet two days _\- but it feels like a lifetime_. He was away from his _life_ , from Haven and bloodless bureaucracy and from watching a friend slowly die while helpless to so much as to ease his pain. Away from his own monastic strictures and his eternally empty room. He was still rended, and hopelessly unsettled - exposed to feelings he'd not tasted in years.

 _And was that good for me?_ Gods knew enough people had told him otherwise. None of them understood that he'd made the only choices he could.

Until Valdir, misforsaken rogue, had chosen otherwise. 

The mad thought was immediately crushed by his conscience. _No, I_ can't _blame some other self for my deeds. And whatever I've done, I don't have time to ruminate about it. I have to get out of here._

He stalked through the low tunnels, his hand brushing absently over the places where plaster and wood and stone came together in the Scale's hybrid home. His ears guided him toward the river and its bustle. He heard whistles and drumbeats now, and breathed charcoal and lamp-oil. Steps behind him - another harmless passer - a light tread, leather on stone.

"Wait." He froze, and glanced backward. He recognised the young man - Thyll, the Morn sailor Stef had talked them past earlier. He lengthened his step. Halflight of evening ahead of him. Should he run, again? Where to, straight into the river? Fast steps behind. The tunnel widened ahead. Flash of red light against a knife. "Valdir," his pursuer exorted. It took long seconds for the name to mean aught to him.

There were two more beneath the red lanterns at the cave mouth. He raised his arms, ready to defend himself, and they fell back - a trap opening. He stepped out under the sky. Storm dull and blistered with fading daylight. A fire hissed in the spitting rain. More people now, ware-hawkers and barely-clad dancers backing away from the marauders' heels. Jorry glanced up contemptuously from his seat by the water, a deep green bottle in his hand.

A boat was moored to a post on the cracked quay. Small - a lifeboat, pine tar dark. Silona stood at its prow, swaying so easily as the river moved that he held Vanyel's eyes without blinking.

The knife-wielders moved to flank him, pressing him back toward the river. Vanyel looked them over; a man and a woman, rangy and carrying long hunting knives. He dropped into a fighting crouch, and reached for the fire. He grabbed a spar of wood, spraying sparks. They danced back from him. Could he run?

"Did I say your heavies could pull their knives out on my land?" 

It took practice, to sound so lazy and so venomous. Scarlet lanternlight streaked over Polly's pale silk robe; the thin crowd parted around her, and Jorry rolled to his feet, three other Scale-marked men falling into ranks behind her. The closer Morn thug lowered her weapon - the other looked to Silona, whose face was frozen in anger. "You heard he's a fugitive? From Mountather?" 

Polly stared at him as if incredulous that this could be any kind of complaint against Valdir's person. "I don't care if he's a travelling circus from the Eastern Empire. Do we have a truce, Captain, or doesn't we?" _This is her land -_

Silona's foot tapped on the hull, his irritation rippling, rocking him in the water. "You might know dangerous tides, Duchess, but I know dangerous people."

"I turned away every bad man, I have no trade at all, least of all with you and yours."

"I see well enough past the log in my eye to know what he is." Strange metaphor. His eyes settled ominous on Vanyel through the sheen of rain. "Use your senses, Duchess. Nought's gone well since he passed the gates, has it? He steps out of a jail, comes here asking us how to slip the border. He sees a ring at market, then next we know there's a Herald tearing up the bazaar? All for that same damned ring? Doesn't add up. And now he's playing with my daughter, he's playing with you, and we got watchmen up both our sterns. What makes you think Stefen can vouch for him?"

"Stefen's not here." Polly informed him brightly, and Silona took a swaying step back, surprise lighting his face. 

"I don't think the song truce covers this man, Duchess."

"I know he owes me an hour's rent," she muttered. And just like that, his chances swayed outriver. No sanctuary. "You think he's bought?" Polly glanced at him, unimpressed - _she's paid off enough lawmen_ \- but his sluggish brain couldn't alight on a point to turn the situation. He hadn't even the shell of Valdir left to protect him. 

"No, not bought - he's owned. He wants something more than he wants his life. Loa cut that much from him. And he's lying about what it is."

Vanyel raised his hands - Valdir was gone, and he'd no protection but the truth. "All I came here for was my friend, be he alive or dead -"

"And some old ring caught your eye?"

"His wedding ring -"

"Do all your friends end up in pieces in the river? Because I saw the hand that ring was pulled from."

He gasped. Polly shrugged grandly, and a sad smoke-trail drifted from the end of the pipe clasped in her hand. "Captain, you're not best placed to complain about corpses in the river -"

"Not like this," and in the fading light, Silona seemed to pale. "We found six pieces of him in the north harbour. My men buried them while my daughter slept. I wouldn't have her see that."

"River don't got teeth, Captain," Polly replied through a brittle smile. _Harri? Oh great gods, what happened to you?_ "I'm glad your distaste didn't stop you cleaning the poor fellow's fingers -"

Silona threw back his head, drinking the bitter-gold sky between gulps of laughter. "And may I live to regret it. Come, you know the truth now as well as I do. Some old trinket and a shredded corpse? You know damned well who sent him." His hand shook as he pointed at Vanyel. "There's no parlaying with Master Dark's creatures. You give truce to him, he'll eat us all alive."

Silona waved his hand to the young lady marauder, and she lunged at Valdir with a yell.

Vanyel vanished.

He tossed the smouldering spar in the same moment that he loosed the spell of invisibility. It brushed her oiled hair, hissing. Smoke smothered the crowd - another illusion, but solid enough that half of them ran in panic. He shoved amid them, part of a wave rushing into the caves. Running from nothing. Nothing was left for him there.

  
  


The sound caught his ears as he drew close to Stefen's window. Ponderous, meandering notes, fingers stumbling along strings without rhythm. Yet he knew them. Leaning his lips close to the glass, he sang.

He sang on through a half-minute of answering silence before the door beside him opened. Stefen looked at him from within its shadow, the instrument cradled in his arm. "You know that song."

"It's one of my favourites," he admitted. He noted how Stefen held the lute, its neck in his right hand. "You were playing with your off-hand -" he noted.

"I was?" Stefen looked at his hands, as if he had no knowledge of what they'd been doing. "It just felt right," he tried to explain, then he abruptly thrust the lute into Vanyel's hands. "That's what you come for, I won't misuse it no more," he declared, and Vanyel felt something inside Stefen crushed as he let the careworn instrument be parted from him. 

The woodgrain against his hands was fit to sting him. _Was it only the music that moved him, not I?_ \- but the hurt didn't outweigh the need that had brought him back here. _I have to set something right._. He held the lute out again. "No, it's not what I came for. May I come in?" he asked.

The wind rustled her strings as he waited at the threshold. Eventually, Stefen nodded, taking the lute with gentle hands and glancing out at the street like a mother hawk as he let Vanyel pass. "You could've been followed -"

"I wasn't. It's not possible," he pledged. His very certainty made Stefen blink, and he looked warily back at Vanyel as he slunk back into his home - _no longer certain what I'm capable of._ He'd been hidden by the illusion until the moment Stef had opened the door.

Stefen sank into a chair, the lute resting in his lap. He eyed it as if he didn't know if he could touch it, and when he glanced up at Vanyel it was as if he wasn't sure he should look at him. Vanyel hung back near the wall, beneath a sconce that held a guttering candle. He leaned on a silk panel, stilling its errant fluttering. "Those is Loa's, you know?" Stef said absently, as he brushed the lute's gutwork with shy fingertips; in the wavering light Vanyel saw his thin hands in a series of flashes - torn fingernails, strings and varnish, shining and then shadowed. "She got a few bolts of silk from some eastern pirate take a fancy to her. She's got a thing for not liking colours lately."

"I noticed," Van replied. "Her father didn't mind about the Eastern pirate?"

"Like he'd know. He think he know her life, he's got another thing coming."

Which went both ways - as Jisa had taught him all too well. _She thinks she sees everything. She doesn't know her father's still protecting her from the worst of their world, as he knows it. _Silence was the kindest gift one could offer in this bloody city.__

And he hadn't expected such a gift himself. He'd played the hapless fool for Stefen and never anticipated that kindness. How much had Stefen kept from him?

"I heard a name at the market." Stef scowled up at him, permitting the question. "Who is Master Dark?"

"That's a story." The lute rang softly as Stef's hand shook against its case. "A shadow with a knife. They say he lives up north - further than Garamill, I don't know where. Master Dark wants something, everyone on the river gets a whisper of it. He's never shown himself. He sends messengers," and Stef glanced at him, eyes flashing in the low light. "Strange people. They pay good - so you hear - but no one admits to taking their coin."

"Pays for what?" Vanyel asked.

"He buys old things - strange daggers and chalices and, and rings. Stuff people says is haunted or wizarded. But mostly it's information - on the ordinariest people. Children, sometimes." He looked away. "And when you hear Master Dark wants to know of someone - well, next thing you hear is they're dead."

"Dead? How?"

"Any old way. An accident. A sickness. Then someone says, oh, that's the one Master Dark wanted. The shadows said their name and now they's dead. It's just a story," Stef said flatly. "Some folks would blame him if their fire went out. I don't even know if he's real. But -" His fingers flicked at the lute-strings. "If Vanyel is real, maybe any story could be real."

"Maybe so," he murmured. Harri had been tracking a blood mage. Van grasped for truth among the scraps of tale. _:Tantras,:_ he called, and tried to fit the two accounts together. It wasn't coherent, but it was the closest he'd come to the truth.

 _:So what now?:_ Tantras asked him. _:Are you ready to cast that spell?:_

 _:Almost,:_ he replied. Stef's hand was wrapped awkwardly over the lute's fretboard, and he avoided Vanyel's eyes.

 _:You could do to lie low for another few hours. The city watchmen are out hunting for a spy and probable murderer,:_ Tran grated. _:All a plot by foreigners set to discredit them.:_

 _:Scapegoats,:_ Van observed. Maybe 'Master Dark' was the pirates' scapegoat. The whole story left him uneasy.

 _:'Valdir' has his finger in a lot of pies today,:_ Tantras noted. Perhaps Stef was thinking much the same. What did those wide eyes see in him now? A lost singer, an enigma chaser, a mysterious swordsman who passed unseen through the city. _And a fly-by-night lover -_ he blushed to think it, but Stefen had not seemed unappreciative of his lovemaking until he knew what Vanyel had seen writ on him.

 _He thought me so innocent. He tried to_ protect _me - when was the last time anyone did that?_

A chord - off-handed, off-key - rang from the lute as Stefen rose to his feet and set it on the table. He gave it a wary look, then turned the same look on Vanyel. "You know, I not met too many folks know that song about the Shadow-Lover."

"It's not performed much. I learned it from a book," Vanyel told him.

"I got it from a roads-minstrel with a taste for argonel. Took the song off his hands because I felt like he didn't deserve it." Stef's black humour roused an unexpected smile. "That song were a friend to me at times - when I didn't want to think about...just being here."

The words seemed to beckon him closer, and Vanyel took a few hesitant steps towards him, picking his feet carefully through the dark as if he walked close to the edge of - of something. Stefen's eyes, dark liquid aflicker with candlelight, reminded him of every time he'd turned aside comfort and company, every time he'd sooner a song in the dark than a friend close by, _and if I say a word to you, one promise, one offer of trust, I'll betray it. If I could touch you again..._

Their eyes locked as if the song had wrought some dark-nights-past magic between them. It echoed inside him, an energy-line trickling back to that moment they saw each other - when Van had played a lovesong to no one - when they'd kissed as mere strangers in the street. _What happened to me, then? What was it I felt when I saw you? A calling? Did I know you were key to something that would need a Herald to set arright? I don't know. But I was drawn to you then, and I still am._

His lips were dry as he felt his way through what few honest words he could find. "Stef. I know things happen in Cul Aber that no one wants to know about. But - I'm not _anyone_. I thought I could come here and be just anyone, but I can't." His disguise had been impossible - since they kissed, since Stefen led him through the city's dark secrets. "And I want to - I _need_ to know what's not right here. It's not just about finding a lost friend now - if it ever was. It's about you too."

Stefen looked at him - eyes devoid of answers, finding challenge in Vanyel's words.

Slowly, Stefen turned away and stripped off his shirt. He stepped into a bright ray of lanternlight beneath the window, as if daring Vanyel to stare at his back. The marks at the edge of his ribs were unignorable; two rows of inch-high black figures in crisp ink over his bones, and above, deep scars on his shoulderblade writ their own stories. Vanyel came close as if hypnotised, and set his hand to Stefen's back. Reading with a finger, illiterately, knowing only it was a row of letters and a row of numbers. _A line in a ledger. How many. How much. Someone said they owned you._

His hand shook. _I should have known. How should I have known? Who should -?_ And there, he lost his grasp of who was asking - what would _Valdir_ think as he touched this? A little fear and pity, a lot of gladness that he hadn't yet fallen so low on his luck? Not this searing anger. His hand pressed gently against Stefen's back, and he dipped low to kiss the words on his skin.

"Valdir," Stefen twitched. "What you mean," and he trailed off, shaking.

 _He hid this from me. Hides it from anyone he can hide it from - but some_ know _, Loa good as_ told _me and I wasn't listening. And he can't trust me. I can't ask that of him._ Vanyel extended his empathic senses, angry at his own helplessness. Empathy was all he had to staunch the wound - and he could feel it, blood seeping beneath the silk and dust and time that Stef had wrapped over the damage.

One last kiss against Stefen's ribs, and he dropped to the ground beside his feet, a hand coasting down Stefen's body until it rested loosely on his ankle. "You tell me what it means," Van responded softly.

Stef spun on his heel, kicking away his hand and curling his lips in a snarl, and Vanyel simply looked up at him until Stefen's face crumpled. "I never tell no one." _I know you don't._ "I was gone, then I was here again. It's not like I'm the only one. Not like anyone don't know it happen."

"I'm not anyone." And his blithe ignorance of Cul Aber's pitfall secrets condemned him. "You told me about it," he reproached himself softly. "You said children got sold -"

"They prefers young ones. I was safe until Berte died - she weren't letting me go without her getting her price. No one ever bothered me when she was around - Scale knew my coin would reach their hands soon enough, and junkies made nice with her cause she knew when to share. I found her cold one winter's morning - _don't_ tell me you're sorry," he warned. "About anything. It was all just mistakes. She were dead and I thought I was free of her world. Didn't realise I hadn't no _other_ world until Dotrid and his friends drove me off. All my gods damn mistakes, you see?"

"No I don't see -" he exclaimed, and Stef sat heavily, clattering a discord from the lute on the table. "Stef, what in hell's names do you mean?"

Stefen's head rested on his arms, and he breathed harder and harder. "I mean I fucked up. I hit the streets, slept here and there, whatever, until they picked me up as vagrant. I got thrown in lockup for the night - and I thought I'd done alright! Didn't seem so bad, got kicked around a bit but it got me indoors on a cold night - you believe that? Seemed fine until a slaver come by the jailhouse and ask if they caught any Hardornen runaways for him."

"But you were born here. You weren't a runaway."

"No, I was a fucking _vagrant_. No one know _where_ I were born and there weren't no proof I couldn't get sold. Anyone with no home and no papers is a catch. Anyone whose name isn't writ down. Jailer came ask me, and I was too dumb to lie - what my last name is, where my parents are, where I was born? I haven't a fucking clue, do I? If I'd lied..." He thumped his head down, chin rapping on the wood. "So he looks at me - one name, no records, no parents, no place to sleep, not on the parish roll, not on the temple school list, not known nowhere except the smoke dens. And they knows it, too. He saw me sing on the street enough times. I was fucking unmarked cargo. I don't even know what he was paid for me. He socked me one and when I wake up it were on the far side of the river."

"Stef," Van breathed as he fell quiet again. "That's when they marked you?"

There was a long silence before Stefen decided to answer him. "The first row. Second was after I were sold. Not like I even care what it says," and Van saw tears run from the edges of his eyes. "I was smaller then - never ate much - and all the bastards knew of me from the jailer was that I sang around Cul Aber, so that's what I was. Songbird for sale, and someone bought it. He was rich as hell. I was his god damn ornament - wound me up, felt me up, had me sing all pretty. It's not like - look, I was lucky."

" _What?_ "

"I weren't sent down a mine or set to an oar like most boys they take. I was a _rarity_ ," he grated. "He was so rich, he had _everything_ , and I was just some toy he picked up at market. It were _easy_ \- I could have just kept on giving him what he wanted and lived easy til he had enough of me. Always enough food. Soft place to lay down - didn't sleep much, mind. Never even had to go outside. All so damn easy until I tried to run away, and I still wonder some nights if that was my only mistake. Running away."

"Stef, gods, Stef," and Vanyel straightened and rose over him, staring at his hunched back in horror. "How could you think -"

"They get to you," and his voice was flat and barren. "They tell you every day that the gods made your soul in its place in Hardorn. They made me sing songs full of it - everyone got their place, and where you're put is where you belong, even if they had to drag you there in chains. Us who was vagrant or runaway, they tell us they saved us from wandering the hells, lost all eternity because we don't know where to belong. And I sang it, until I thought they was right or I was mad. I had to get mad," and he spoke into the empty space between his forearms, "I kept my songs in my head. All the old love-songs and hero-songs I used to sing. I would pretend," and his voice cracked. "Like I was in a song and - and - V - v - s-someone would come rescue me." He shook his head, despairing of his own imagination, and Vanyel's heart pounded bitter in his throat. "I knew was all just pretend. I knew heroes only happen to godly honest folk. I had to rescue _myself_ , and it took my madness to get through _their_ madness and see it. And I tried, and," he curled his arms about himself and looked away.

"You did escape," Vanyel whispered, his heart hanging by that hair. _You thought of_ me _, while I languished in Haven and Valdemar betrayed you to slavers?_

"Not first time. The gateguards saw me try to sneak out and," Stef's face curled with a pain that cut out of memory, and whatever else he had to say of it was lost. "Second time, I made it to the docks in Lydra before dawn, and thought to stow away, but Loa were there hauling cargo and wanted sport of me." He raised his head, staring through the thick window-glass. "Maybe I got some luck. More luck than I got mistakes. I don't ask why no more. Don't want no truths about why is what is," and he shuddered as if the thought of looking upon his own life through that rippled glass was too much of a horror.

Valdir's heart ached for him. Valdir might as well have vanished like smoke between their bodies. Vanyel's mind tore at itself, helpless to do more than listen. "How old were you?" he asked, because he couldn't not.

"Don't rightly know, do I? Four winters ago. I was fourteen by my count. Took near a year to get away." Stef glanced at him of a sudden, and if he saw Vanyel's feelings in his eyes, he mistook them sorely. "I know I shouldn't have lied to you, but I never wanted you to look at me and see just some pitiful runaway slave."

Vanyel stared at him with something very far from pity. "If I -" and he broke off because any pledge of vengeance would serve only himself. He _hated_ feeling so helpless. _Give me time_ , he only vowed. There was so little he could offer without time. "If, Stef, if you need a shoulder -"

"If I needed aught, would be a kick to the head. It only happened because I was _stupid_ ," and Stef turned around, folded his arms over the back of the chair defiantly. "I pick a damnfool way to learn."

Vanyel bit his tongue. Silent and listening with his every sense, _aching_ to do _anything_ to reach him. He couldn't imagine feeling indifferent to Stefen's suffering - not as a Herald, or as a lover. Certainly not as himself.

"Let me ask you," and he looked at Vanyel with a muted desperation. "Do you think, if I went west I'd get to places where even _if_ someone saw it, it'd be more trouble than I'm worth to come all the way to Cul Aber to sell me back?"

For a moment he couldn't speak because his sorrow and anger were far, far too much in the way. "Stef," he forced out. "If you leave Cul Aber, you'll be safe. I swear on my soul. I swear on my name," and Stefen looked deep into his eyes, searching for something to believe in. 

  
  


They had sex again, somewhat to Vanyel's surprise, but Stefen wanted it and that was all that mattered to him. It was much slower than their first tussle; wandering touches, together and apart in broken rhythm. Sometimes Stefen backed away and silently stared at him for a while. Every resumption of touch was another opportunity to share Stef's feelings skin on skin. Naked above him, letting Vanyel caress his marked flesh. Van's anger slipped out in his passion, dissipated in his yielding. The dying candle seemed to throw what he knew of Stef into shadow; his aura of careless sexuality, his guardedness, his solitary life. _They hurt you_ , and the thought of it could have torn him apart. 

It was enough to offer Stef what he needed - and he felt those odd, contradictory needs, a search for control, escape, oblivion in the arms of a stranger. Stefen needed to call their tune, but Vanyel kept the pace languid. At times, Stef mocked him for his age.

Lying together spent, Stef asked questions to which Valdir had no answers, and Vanyel was surprised how free he felt to answer on behalf of his virgin alias. If he'd been _himself_ , his tongue would have withered in his mouth. How many? Stef scoffed a little at his answer, and more when he clarified that some of them had been _girls_. Did you get much in the Guard? Some, but he'd been careful - years at close quarters made one wary of rumour. Did he ever like to do it the other way about? Well enough - yet not so well. When did he have his first?

"I was fifteen," he answered softly.

"Was it good? Did you like him?" Van's heart caught in his throat as he nodded, and Stef slumped against his shoulder. "Wish you liked me that much."

  
  


He was drowsing with one of Stefen's elbows wedged in his ribs (in sleep, Stefen seemed composed wholly of elbows) when Yfandes prickled at the back of his mind. _:Chosen,:_ she murmured. _:Did I hear the strains of a duet?:_

 _:Shut up,:_ he replied, with affection but little contentment - it was a long time since last it were she teasing he about a tryst. He'd feared how she might react; she didn't usually question his choice of company, but he had rarely taken such questionable company. 

He desperately needed to rest, but Stefen's warm, angular body beside his gave him too much to think about. He'd gone far, far further than he should have, without coming close to doing enough. Stef had never known childhood or family, never had any safety but what his own hands could provide, and all Vanyel could offer him was the embrace of a lying stranger who'd be gone from his life within days. He hadn't even realised how young Stefen was - and Stef wasn't the one of them who'd lied about his age. _I should be glad she's only taunting me..._

 _:You're not sure this was wise,:_ she observed.

 _:I'm sure it wasn't.:_ Wisdom had not been one of the faculties he'd engaged before diving into this. _:But it was what he needed,:_ he added, defensive.

 _:What_ he _needed?:_ She seemed a little amused, and Vanyel allowed that his body was as deeply satisfied by the encounter as his mind was troubled. _:Surely you don't think you're the only one he could have turned to for a tumble?:_

He sat up slowly, trying to avoid disturbing Stefen's rest. _:No, but...it meant more than that. He needed someone to listen - and to show that they were listening.:_ His Empathic senses still felt oversensitised, oddly attuned to Stefen's every breath. Vanyel could tell he was dreaming - not of hurt, but perhaps of flight. His mind's habit was to run away. Van stroked the young man's head, intensely protective of his fragile rest. _And how will he feel when I leave? Once he realises Valdir was a fraud?_

Godsdammit, would none of his deeds go unpunished? 

_:You're right,:_ he conceeded, bitter. _:I won't leave him short of one-night lovers, and one night with me won't put him at so much risk. He won't miss me and he'll never know who I am.:_

He clung to that, put faith in peaceful sleep. Had he kept the hurt from his words? Probably not. Knowing that he could mitigate his error by leaving soon, silent and unmissed, only made him feel more wretched, and why?

If he'd looked down with eyes alone he could not have seen more than a shadow in the darkness, but he could feel - such warmth, the quick pulse of Stef's restless dreaming. A fortitude kept as well-concealed as his vulnerability. The thought of leaving the young man alone here was unbearable.

He would do it - no question of that - but _damnit_ could he not take even _one_ illusory night of comradeship and pleasure, one tryst without having to be Vanyel? Without worrying who knew, who watched, who he might offend, who he might mark for destruction? Could he not _once_ have sex like he didn't care about any of that? _No,_ he realised. _I can't separate off that part of me. It wasn't_ Valdir _he made love with - it was me. A stranger to him. A stranger with_ baggage _._

Strangers, healing each other. Liars, finding each other's truths.

Sleep troubled him.


	8. Chapter 8

He awoke lying on his side, feeling like dark water; empty, thoughts diffusing even as his next task shaped itself in his mind.

Stef was beside him on the narrow straw mattress - _"I don't sleep in company,"_ he'd announced hours ago, before curling against Vanyel's side and drifting away with the night. Rules broken. Lines crossed and walls breached. Vanyel rose slowly. Still that wrenching feeling as he shuffled away, the cold air entreating him in biting whispers not to leave his sleeping lover. He scrambled into his clothes, shivering and glancing at the shadows where Stefen lay. 

Moonlight wavered through the poor glass, casting ripples across the floor. He'd slept not long, but he had sorely needed it; the intricate spell would require energy and focus, and brief, sound sleep had restored a measure of both. He tested his energy levels, and was a little surprised by how much he'd recovered. _I only hope it's enough._ He reached with his Othersenses as he palmed open the door. Stefen, barely visible to his eyes, was a crimson-bright fire to his inner vision, flickering softly beneath the window. _He's so resilient. Given even a little stability - a few years somewhere safe - he could be so much. A Bard, a healer and a peacemaker. I'd give anything to see that..._ Vanyel had never left a lover without a twist of regret, even knowing it was always for the best and inevitable. But now - his sorrow felt like ice in his jaw, and drifting uncertainties cracked beneath his every thought. _You barely brought yourself to trust me, and here I am showing you why you shouldn't have?_

Outside, the stars flickered between fleeting clouds. It was hard to see to the next corner - or think past the next spell. He wished he dared a magelight. It was so dark he didn't know what he was treading through. His ears guided him more than his eyes.

To the river.

Light rain spattered his face as he reached further into the darkness. _:Wake up, friend,:_ he nudged Tantras.

 _:I'm not asleep,:_ mumbled Tran, though Vanyel could have believed otherwise from the sluggish beat of his thoughts. _You're ready?:_

 _:I might as well be,:_ Vanyel answered. _:I more or less know where to look, so waiting won't make it any easier.:_

_:Strike while the iron's still hot?:_

_:Something like that,:_ he replied awkwardly - he couldn't lie mind-to-mind. The balance of time and energy should have been his only consideration, but it wasn't. Valdir _had_ to depart much the same way he arrived - a thief in the night. Windborne, leaving nought but his old lute.

Which would be sign enough of how false Valdir had played Stefen. 

_I can't think of that now._ He reached out, tasting the air's energy; the edge of a storm was driving the seemingly gentle rain westward into Valdemar. He heard footsteps not far away, but saw no one. The night's commerce was done, fires doused and windows shuttered, so only lingering scents reminded him of the life of the city; a little blood, a little smoke. Here and there, the heavy breaths of a stoop-sleeper. He passed under the old arch that Stefen's street was named for; the crumbling white stone turned briefly resplendent with kind moonlight, too dim to show the wear of its age.

The stars were of little aid in finding his way, but that sound - thrumming and rushing, beating on stone and pattering a welcome to the rain striking on its skin - called to him. He hadn't seen the shifting scuffmarks of the Scale's territorial border, but he sensed he was beyond it; the stones beneath his feet felt a little cleaner, a little more whole. 

All borders vanished in the night. It was a hazard. He kept heading north, the sound growing as the river curled back to meet him, and he reached out for Tantras again. _:You still have that ring?:_

_:I'm wearing it.:_

_:Hold it in the palm of your right hand. I'm going to Fetch it,:_ Van warned him.

Tantras seemed to blink at him tiredly. _:Whatever you say. You know what you're doing.:_

Vanyel extended his senses towards his friend's weary, angry presence, brushing against mindshields toughened with resolve. He filtered out all those extraneous sensations of _Tantras_ \- blue glow of life-energy, cutting thoughts and emotions that cast shadows inward - and settled on that base plane where the Gift of Fetching _began_ ; the physical. He raised his hand to meet Tantras's, which wasn't there...and with a flick of his mind, the ring rested between his fingers.

He felt Tantras startle, and he slipped the ring onto his middle finger; too wide for his thin hands, but he wouldn't be wearing it for long. Such a small object, so close at hand, it had taken little of his power to procure it. A mere twist of silver that had brought such illumination and such trouble in its path. _And without it, I would never have found out about Stefen's past..._

Anger shook through him again. Why was it so hard to put Stefen out of mind? Great gods, when he'd last seen the ring, Stefen had been turning out his pockets and cursing. He had kindness more than coin, and had turned Valdir back with his prize barely out of reach. 

And it couldn't matter to Vanyel. It wasn't Vanyel Stef had been kind to, and Valdir didn't exist, and that was that. _Focus._

He reached out to Yfandes, and indicated his destination - at the riverside, on the northern edge of the city. _:Could you come close? I might have need of your energy.:_

 _:Not like you've missed me the last two days, then.:_ Even the light teasing was enough to scrape at his raw feelings, and she Sent him a gentle nudge. _:I'll be near. Do what you came to do.:_

 _:I'll try.:_ She must know how apprehensive he was. He'd never cast the spell before; Savil had talked him through it before they'd left Haven, but a spell's essence resisted description. Sometimes, merely knowing what was possible had been enough to make it happen. Other times, unfamiliarity had led him to dangerous mistakes.

Far away, he heard hoofbeats over the babble of the river. The rain had thickened, beating on his face in the wind. He felt the city drop away before him; ahead was only the sound and the shimmer of the water. He couldn't be certain, but this ought to be close enough to the old northern harbour Silona had spoken of. Here, the Culway's prizes and victims washed ashore.

He paced the wall with his hand to the stone until he found an opening; downward, he took a precarious stairway, and trod a slick wooden wharf as far into the river as it would lead him. Few boats were moored here. As his eyes cast over the river, he fancied the tips of its ripples had spined edges. The scent of blood, he must have been imagining.

Vanyel raised his hand into the wild wind and focused his power on Harri's ring, tendrils of his magic asking the silver's history. He felt a piercing cold, and the river before him glittered with frost.

He couldn't move. He wasn't _here_ yet. 

Vanyel let the still landscape pass through time. It had been _cold_ two nights ago - ice crystals danced on the water, scattered diamonds of moonlight. On the horizon, he saw the faintest candle-glow of sleeping Lydra, a street lantern burning here or there, over-river and through the strange lands beyond. _Wouldn't let no friend go to Hardorn -_

If he could only look back far enough - not days, but through years and pain - he'd see Stefen coming toward him. A youth in the prow of a pirate longship. Reminding him, _you won't see your friend again._

Oh, Stefen -

The light on the water seemed to re-order itself; a curve, a spur, emerging from the scattered motes. A knife-edge reaching for him from so far away.

Movement flickered at the horizon. 

He couldn't even gasp. _It's ice,_ he realised, even as the frost below him solidified, growing out to follow the line of Harren's power. _Gods. I told Tantras I could have walked across in midwinter. But why here?_

And the darkness around him brightened. Lights danced around him, their glow doubled by the river. _Loa saw this. He must have heard from the rivermen that he had to make landfall at the market, but someone didn't want him there. They wanted him here._

The fleck of shadow on the ice path came closer, grew into a man, and Vanyel saw the energy coiling beneath him - a deep, elemental chill building a tongue, a bridge across Valdemar's natural edge.

 _And no sign of Thia._ To drive Harren on such a desperate, fragile crossing, Thia had to be already dead. _Only the hunted run on ice._ The arc now spanned the river. Harren came closer, so close Vanyel knew the shape of him, the sway of broad shoulders and the rhythm of his long stride, rarely even slipping. His face appeared in a ray of moonlight, hidden at once by clouds, and Vanyel wished he could look away. From what he knew would come, but not how. 

He had come so far only to witness this moment. To see his face again. 

Some foolish part of Vanyel's mind was willing Harri to make it.

He barely dared breathe as Harren came closer. Harren's face turned away from him, looking back to the east. Fearing an enemy he knew. Vanyel felt the ice sway below him, and for a second he thought he knew how it would end.

Then the water erupted.

A long flash of silver cut through the broken water, scything towards Harri's torso. Harri screamed in shock, and his eyes cut straight through Vanyel - through time and chaos, a last message even as the jagged silver shape passed between them. 

Despair.

_He knew. He told me. Signs for days that he was watched and hunted. And Thia was killed, and he came so, so close to home._

Harri raised a levinbolt in his hands, and the serpentine creature in the air whirled around the flash of light. The sawblade ridge of its spine slammed into his body even as the spell left his hands. Vanyel had nowhere else to look. He could only slow the moment as Savil had taught him. He fixed the vision like a horrifying portrait, watching the silvered, knife-edge extrusion ripping through Harren's body. _I have to know what it is._ This was no magical beast of his knowing, no demon. _Slow..._

The image slowed - and it didn't slow. It danced double in his eyes - a serpent still moving like a thrown knife, skimming the water into a torrent of froth, while its lethargic counterpoint twisted against his falling friend. He watched Harri fold and slip away inchwise, dark blood blooming at the edge of the ice. _Something's wrong,_ and Vanyel fumbled with the spell, trying to find his error in the hopelessly fractured vision. _What did I do wrong -?_

Nothing.

He had done nothing wrong.

_:Vanyel!:_

He knew it before Yfandes's call of warning. He cut the spell off violently, and his hand stang with pain. He stumbled backward a moment before the creature - the weapon - sprang from the water to cut him down.

It mised him by inches, and slammed against the river. _:What is that?:_ he gasped. Vanyel was reeling from backlash, fumbling for power. He slung a line of flame straight at it, and the beast dropped into the water.

The magic hit the surface with a hiss. For a second, Vanyel was able to collect himself. _It kills,_ he thought through his own question. _It went for Harri physically - and it will do the same to me. Magic scares it - it's probably not shielded against spells, but it's fast. Faster than me._ His probing through energy-lines finally reached a node, small and far downriver. He drew in its power, spun it into his shields even as he quested for more. 

The water's surface rippled around a protruding fin. 

He had but moments to ready spells, and he used them, sending levinbolts to strike the river, and he heard the beast keen and saw it flip ungainly from the water. In reflected light he saw it uncoil - a beast twice his height, flying on magic and momentum, its spinal ridge an array of hooked knives. Eyeless and fanged, tapering to a spearpoint. As if a coldrake had been reshaped by a master swordsmith. 

It spun again, and came right at him.

Vanyel had all but nothing left, and little hope of evasion. He raised his hands, light blooming between them, and flung -

The creature veered from its course, skimming the river. Vanyel breathed, and flicked another harmless magelight toward its eyes, sending it back into the river. _Fast, hells yes, but it's not clever._ Someone had taught the dumb thing to fear magic, but it couldn't tell a real attack spell from a harmless illusion.

He took stock of his resources. Another node, deep in the hinterlands - he tapped hungrily but it was so far away, its power dissipating to distance. He crouched, touched a hand to the freezing river - extending his shields and his senses, feeling what moved under-river. Vibrations below, water turning and rocks stirring.

He pushed a physical shield outward over the surface, sweeping the river like a curtain. He let water run through it; a net. _Speed's all you've got. If I can just pin you down -_

The water crested. That was his only warning before the beast leapt upward, arcing toward him - and it thrashed against the spell-net. _I've got you, I've got you._ He cast fire at the convulsing, twisting thing, and felt it writhe with pain. Its teeth - dagger-blades in the blind bulge of its head - opened, crying out its agony as he attacked again.

He saw inside it in the flashes of light he made. Tongueless, empty. Barely able to think. A weapon, primitively feeling and sensing. And its pain outweighed its fear. It turned, snapped its jaws and arched, pounding the net with its own deadly body and Vanyel felt his power cracking. _Die damn you -_ and he shoved it back with a thrust of power as the net broke around it. The beast tumbled backward, its head sinking toward the river, its tail flicking toward Vanyel like a whip.

Vanyel cursed, feeling the fracture running back through his shields. He tried to knit the tattered lines back tight together, and it was long moments before he realised he was bleeding. 

He swayed, clutching his hand over the wound. Dropping to a crouch, he felt the wood beneath him shake. 

The beast burst from the water, rising to strike - and he heard an unmistakeable mechanical clatter. It screeched, bowing backward and thrashing, and from behind him Loa hollered. _"I got it -"_

It didn't bleed. A sort of wet, green light spilled from between its scales, Loa's crossbow bolt stark against its strangeness. Ichor, a remnant of its foul forging. The beast hissed and whirled, trying to shake the bolt away. Vanyel _reached_ for the edge of the wound, shoving the bolt deeper. Fetching its flesh apart even as he readied his magic, lightning forming in his hand. It struggled, seeping down toward the water, and he blasted it with all he had left.

The first flash of light bloomed around the bolt, as if it were impaled by pure moonlight. Then it flashed tip to tail with burning blue sparks, and he felt the flesh below its ridges become cinder. He felt its shadow beating even as its body died. _Wings beating._

Vanyel stumbled over on the jetty and slipped, half of him in water and the other half too worn to do anything about it. _What in hellfires. A trap - a monstrous trap - if Loa hadn't, oh gods, they saw me -_

Hands on his back. "I knew he were in trouble with _someone_." Stefen muttered, and yanked him away from the water. "Still breathing." A cold hand fumbled at his neck, shivering too hard to find a pulse.

"That's trouble, eh?" Loa spat out a mouthful of rain. "He was fucking _glowing_ , Stef. You fucking saw him." Vanyel tried to speak, to stand, but his body wasn't cooperating. "If you get him on his feet, I'll get him under cover -"

"Shhh!" There was no silence for Vanyel - the river throbbed in his ears, the creatures below it still screaming into his mind. "Horses upside - I hear two of them. Can you stand?" he asked, his lips near Vanyel's ear, and his hands feeling around his ribs. 

"I lay you any money that's the god damned law, I can't stay. You can't stay," Steps on the board, near enough to add to the pounding in his head. "I _knew_ something weren't right with him. I ain't letting his troubles be mine. You with me?" Voice receding. Loa was gone without an answer.

"I -" _Go_ , he willed, as Stefen hesitated. _Don't be here when Tantras finds me. Please. Please._ "I can't leave you here," he explained. "We can hide - come on." He tried to pull Vanyel half-upright - and Van yelped with pain.

"Damn, damn, damn," he muttered, and his cold hands shook convulsively. "I'm sorry. Can you, Valdir, please," and his rising panic was a shrill, sharp bell against Vanyel's tortured senses. "Are you bleeding?" and he didn't even _know_ any more because everything was cold and flowing. "Shit," and he cradled Vanyel's neck, his free hand searching Van's torso for the wound. "I saw it go at you - what is it, what did you...I saw lightning and fire," and a great hush settled over them, the clamour lulled by awe and terror and fading strength.

If he'd had a name, perhaps Stefen would have whispered it. But Stef simply kissed him - quickly, too tremulous to reassure, too insistent to say goodbye. Footsteps rang louder and he felt a presence close and reaching before the cupped-hands call. _"Vanyel!"_

  
  


The river pummelled him from the inside. He tried to breathe through a throat stuffed with weeds and stones and water - tried to move as the current held him down. He _couldn't_ move, and terror overtook him - spines under his ribs, wounds tearing open. Something _outside_ connected - hands, a voice, another person who had to run before they were drowned or devoured, and he tried to move but he was inert, driftwood, splintering as it tore through him -

And he was awake. Gasping, but awake. "Van," and his ears were ringing and thick with water. Words inside and outside. He felt like a tiny thunderbolt had rattled through his mind - Yfandes's last-ditch effort to wake him from his nightmare. He tried to make sense of Tantras's fuzzy words. "Try not to move too much - Healer's orders - _think_ at me if you have to -" 

Vanyel choked, and Tantras shoved a cup gracelessly to his lips. He tried to grasp it, and tilted half its contents over his chin, but the rest of the water helped a little. He risked opening his eyes - it was too bright, but it was good to see Tantras's face, on the edge of rare exasperation. Few besides himself had extracted that particular expression from his old friend.

He tried to take stock of himself. Someone had definitely done their best to make him comfortable; he was in a real bed, and wearing a loose linen nightshirt that might belong to Tantras. With blurred vision, he saw what looked like Tran's packs tossed into a corner. The sharp shadows of rooftops covered the stone walls - _must be Tran's room above the gatehouse._

"Nightmare?" Tran asked. Vanyel nodded weakly. "Gods, Van. Not surprised, after..." and he shook his head. "What happened out there? I only know what Delian heard from Yfandes," and his eyes widened.

"A trap," he croaked, and abandoned speaking. _:The whole thing was a trap,:_ he explained. _:It was planted in the north harbour, waiting for someone to use magic on the Culway - first Harri, and then me.:_

"What _was_ it? A demon?" Tantras asked.

 _:No, a construct - a mage-made thing,:_ he explained. This didn't alleviate Tantras's panicked expression, nor should it. _:Whoever made that and set it...I'm not looking forward to finding out what else they can do.:_

"But you're going to," Tran observed.

"You know me," he replied, clearing his throat. "Harri must have been right. Hardorn really was entertaining a blood mage - willingly or otherwise."

"That's just what we need. Where are they now?" Tantras asked, eyes narrowed.

"If I knew, I wouldn't be sitting here," and Tantras glared at him sternly. "I can't rest for long," Vanyel insisted. "Not if what the pirates said was true. This mage has probably been killing for a long time already. And I've a feeling..." Tantras's eyes pressed him, and he tried to recall that sensation - a power that went hither-tither beyond the night, wings beating against void. "I _might_ have felt his presence before." He shook his head, and even that motion tugged at the complex of bandages growing on his torso. "Gods, what did it do to me?"

"Tried to cut you in two, so I'm told. Took a slice below the ribs. Yfandes and I carried you back here and requisitioned the Lord Mayor's household healer to set you to rights."

"Thank you," he murmured, weak but sincere. He could feel the Healing energy knitting his wounds whole - and he could tell he'd been lucky this time.

Tantras shook his head. "We could stop meeting like this," he suggested.

"You prefer prisons to sickbeds, then?" Speaking hurt only a little now. Less so than silence. 

Tantras sighed - it was a poor joke, with worse timing. About what he was accustomed to from Vanyel. "You scared me," he admitted. "I'd like to never drop you on a Healer's doorstep in the nick of time ever again." He arched one eyebrow thoughtfully. "That healer _may_ have asked if you were collecting fancy-looking scars from wounds that didn't kill you."

He groaned. " _You_ know I don't mean to."

"And I told her that. That you don't mean to," Tantras assured him, will great levity. "But the way your life goes, every scar's another insufferable song -"

"Oh gods, Stefen," and Vanyel sat bolt upright, instantly regretting it as pain sawed through him. "I saw him -"

Tantras sighed, evidently unsurprised at the change of subject. "I know. I spoke to him last night. Not sure where he's been since, though. I called at his home this morning, but he wasn't there." Vanyel lay back down slowly, hoping Tantras wasn't trying too hard to read him. "He surprised me," and Tantras sounded a little dazed.

"How?"

"He lied to me so fervently that I almost believed him - he swore up and down that you were his oldest friend, worse for drink and just needing helped back to your home on Masonway, nothing wrong or unlawful and _definitely_ not whoever I was looking for. I thought I was going mad. That was his Gift at work? I didn't know a Bard could do that. If he's that powerful..." 

A shiver ran through him at the thought of it. Not the power - not that alone - but that Stefen had used it for him. "He saw me use magic," he whispered. _And still he faced down Tran for me? Because he thought Tran was going to - to take me and sell me -?_

Tantras nodded. "He was still quite intent on keeping you out of the hands of the law," he observed, and smiled with wondering amusement.

 _You have no idea why -_ and Vanyel found he hadn't strength nor heart to explain how entirely unamusing Stefen's motivations were. His last energy was knit into his mindshields; Tran would, at least, be spared Vanyel's feelings on the matter. "He fled, then?" he asked.

"I convinced him we would see you right. 'Fandes found her way down a tow path and got him to lay off - no arguing with her when she's eyeballing you. I did my sorry best to explain everything."

"You told him who I am."

"He hadn't left me much of a choice," replied Tantras, seeming perplexed by Vanyel's rising horror. "I told him you'd had to disguise yourself to find Harri - and I thanked him for all he'd done to help us. Van?" and he reached a hand to Vanyel's shoulder. "Van, are you -" His eyes narrowed, and then he looked away, smiling strangely.

Vanyel shied into his pillows, belatedly trying to hide his bruised neck. _Damn, damn, damn._

Tran shook his head, blinking at whatever unfathomable thoughts he was harbouring. "I'm no foreseer but I've a funny feeling we'll see Stefen again."

"Like a bad ha'penny?"

"Well, I don't think this town runs on the king's legal tender," Tantras agreed, glancing at Vanyel's neck again with a barely hidden smirk. Vanyel could feel himself blushing, hoped that Tantras would attribute his flushed face to his shaky condition - _not likely. Gods, but Tran_ knows _it's been years since... How could I explain to him what happened between Stef and I? How can I even explain it to myself?_

Tantras shrugged. "But I'm so sure we'll see more of him. Maybe it's just whatever he did to my mind - part of me _still_ wants to believe that he knew you better than I did. If it was anyone _but_ you, I'd wonder if..." He broke off, staring at Vanyel as if he'd just seen something very odd indeed. "Well, I'll put word out. From all you've said, we might need him."

"Do that," he replied absently. Despair ate at him, toyed with his wounds. It didn't matter what Tantras thought about any of it. _Stef won't answer your damned word._

  
  


Tran left him to rest, which was the last thing Vanyel was capable of. A swarm of stinging memories drove his mind in circles. _Mistakes. Stef was right - whatever good came of them, it was my mistakes that led to evil._ And it was hard enough to enumerate them. He couldn't undo the lies he'd told, much less the love they'd made.

 _It was doomed from the first moment. He doesn't even know who I_ am _. Not - as a person._ He buried his face in his pillows, feeling guilt and confusion twist inside his body, tugging at his wounds. _You can't found trust on a lie. I can't have ruined something that was never even possible. And it wasn't. Ever._

And he shouldn't, couldn't, be hurting _this_ much.

 _:What's wrong, Van?:_ Yfandes asked him gently.

He might as well say it - was there anything he held dear that he hadn't betrayed? _:I was trying to remember the last time I felt so - so taken with someone. And then I did remember.:_ Gods, but taken wasn't even the word. Consumed? _Oh Lendel, I'm so sorry..._

She Sent him something akin to a patient, kind smile. Not a _hint_ of surprise or reproach. _:One might wonder what that's worth.:_

 _:Nothing,:_ he replied. Firmly, hopelessly. _:How could it amount to anything? Stef knows 'Valdir' was just another person who betrayed him.:_ The obsession was smothered in its cradle, bereft of the honesty that Vanyel had always held paramount in his personal relationships. How had he even brought himself to _do_ this?

_Because it never felt like we lacked honesty._

Oh, but that was worse. That was madness speaking, low, lulling delusions, seducing Vanyel into believing his own lies. They'd come together so easily - sharing troubles and songs before pleasure _\- and then I let someone_ inside me _who didn't know my_ name. _That's unforgivable, no matter_ how _else I let him know me._ Was that all they'd shared - tokens of themselves? Scrapings from his past, presented in lieu of his real name and real reasons for being there?

He had so many reasons to be angry with himself. That he'd done it. That he'd had to do it. That there had _never_ been a way for him to touch Stefen without violating every principle he held dear _\- and he'd still done it._

Yfandes nudged at his mind through his reverie. _:Be that as it may - he's still profoundly and_ unusually _Gifted. If you believe Gifts appear in Valdemar because we need them...:_

And of course his failings had consequences. If Stefen had ever been willing to trust in Heralds, or to honour Valdemar's faraway king, Vanyel's deceptions had likely put an end to the possibility. _:Tantras is trying to find him,:_ he reminded her stonily. _:Maybe if I'm not involved -:_

He heard a tap at the window.

Vanyel stood gingerly, and looked out into the sky and the city. He gasped, and the window sprang wide as he was crossing the room to open it; Stefen scrambled up onto the sill, gripping the edge with bare toes. The breeze swept waves of red hair across his face, and he swayed - "For the love of the gods, come inside," Vanyel pleaded, and reached out his arms, guiding Stef inwards.

They stared at each other for long moments. Vanyel dropped his eyes and his hands when he couldn't stand it any more, and found himself watching Stefen's bare, scratched feet flexing against the cold wooden floor. "Figured I should pay a call on you before you went away," Stef said.

"I'm glad to see you again," Vanyel admitted through teeth grit with shame. He watched Stef's right foot curl and uncurl as the silence between them grew hard and tense. 

"I'm trying to put you together," Stefen continued. "You're really Vanyel," and Van only nodded. "So I knew all those songs about you. And then I saw you singing in the square and - I couldn't look away from you. Last night, I thought I'd got to know you," he accused. "You're different now." Vanyel didn't doubt it. Valdir had many things he lacked - fears and humilities, desperation enough to stifle his conscience. "I got a rule," Stef said, voice shaking. "No one owns me. No one keeps me, no one _plays_ me."

"I'm so sorry - truly. If I could have told you," he began, but that wasn't true and he couldn't lie to Stefen any more. "No. If I'd been - myself - with you, I could never have been with you at all. It's not you -" he added hastily at the flash of hurt in Stef's eyes. "But I would never have dared. I wasn't lying when I told you it had been a very long time. I don't dare." He looked at Stefen again, no longer sure which of them was more confused.

Stefen shook his head, shaking chaotic hair out of his face. "We both do what we had to, right? Roll of the dice?" he sighed, doubt and regret shading his eyes. "Gods _damned_ , what's happened to me? If I knew what were real," and he covered his face with his hands. "I got no heart for this. Didn't even know what I were feeling - I never felt this way with someone. Only time it wasn't easy to get gone after," and his words faltered. "It's goodbye, then? You up and leave on your white horse, and I stay here in this dump saddled with a rep for palling with the law, no hard feelings either side?" The facaetious words wavered like a drunken fiddler.

Vanyel bit his lip. "I was going to ask Herald Tantras to put this to you - I thought you'd not hear it from me. Valdemar can't ignore you any longer."

Stefen stared at him suspiciously. "The hells you mean?"

"I mean we need you. What you can do to people with your song - it's the Gift that the Bards of Valdemar have, and you use it as well as any Master Bard I ever heard. And you can sing pain away - I've never heard of _anyone_ who can do that. Stef," and Stefen shook his head, dazed and wary. "Did you know King Randale has been ill?"

"Heard some road talk of it."

"He's been in pain for years now, and every Healer in Haven's failed to bring him relief. You just might be the one person who can help him."

Stefen gasped at him, and then laughed in derision. "You want me in your _royal court_? I don't even read."

"I know how quick your mind is," Van assured him. "There's nothing you'd need to know that I wouldn't trust you to learn. And I swear you'd be safe there." Stef watched him, still in shock, but Vanyel could see his innate calculation getting to work. _Gods, if he agrees to come with me I don't even know what I'll do. What I'd tell Randi. Or Breda. Or my_ parents _, gods spare me. But leaving him here would be like leaving a diamond in a rat's-nest even if I_ didn't _love him._

The admission cast out all other thoughts he might have had. His feelings were undeniable, and completely untenable - he couldn't, _mustn't_ , say it. It would only sound like a further deception, an act of emotional blackmail.

Their eyes met. He could keep silence, yes, but he couldn't keep his feelings from showing, not now. It was as if he saw his own reflection in Stefen's gaze - he who days ago, Stef hadn't even been sure was real, a name from fantasy put to the face of his anonymous lover. Behind Stef's suspicion, he saw a light growing his eyes. "If you need time to think on it -" he tried.

Stef shook his head. "What are my options, really? Go west while going's good, or sit here counting coppers and covering my marks until Silona or Polly gets bored of my truce and has me knifed? That's if we've got much longer before Loa turns on her father and sends us all downriver."

Vanyel tried to still his nerves at Stefen's considerations. "I don't like to think of Cul Aber without you," he wondered.

"That's a damn good reason to not think of it at all," Stefen told him. "This ain't Hardorn, where each man has his place in the heavenly array," he sniffed. "River flows on with or without me. I either got to spend every day of the rest of my life thinking on what might have happened if I followed you - or I can follow you." He held Vanyel's eyes, deeply thoughtful, full of possibility and worry. "What's your stake? You take me to your king," and Stef looked away in trepidation. "You even want to be seen with the likes of me?"

Van sighed. "Gods, I wish it was that easy. I should be honoured to be seen with someone as - courageous and brilliant and beautiful as you." Stef's eyes widened. "But I told you, I would never have dared. Anyone who's seen close to me could be attacked by my enemies - and I want you to be safe more than anything. And as far as the Court's concerned, I don't know what repercussions I might get for just - being myself. I've never lied about being shaych," he tried to explain. "It's years since I was last seen with _anyone._ I've let them think I'm an unfeeling statue," he added bitterly.

"But you're not," Stef said softly. "I understand. It were like that here before truce, you know? The gangs went for the other crew's lovers, their families. I know how it were. But I rather take my chance and have a life than do naught and have none."

Vanyel nodded slowly. "If the palace is a pit full of warring vipers - that's exactly what you're used to dealing with, isn't it? I trust you," he said again, amazed at himself. "You're used to making a stir without ruffling a feather, and keeping what's yours to yourself."

"I am," Stef nodded. "You thought it all out, then? How this is going to go?"

"No," he avowed. "I didn't dream you'd give me another chance. But I meant what I said - Valdemar needs you. That means I have to find a way." He'd spent most of his life putting Valdemar first, fitting his own needs in here and there, somewhere far behind. Would Stefen ever understand that?

"Suppose we began again, for true? Just like I never saw you before." Van nodded in relief, and Stefen offered his arms as if in greeting. "I'm Stefen. Trucemaker, singer, former vagrant and slave. Pleased to meet you."

Vanyel took his arms, and felt him tremble. _This is more of himself than he ever offers anyone. More truth, more trust. I swear I'll honour that._ "And I you," he replied. "Vanyel Ashkevron, First Herald-Mage of Valdemar - known by a few other titles." He saw Stef's lips move, mouthing a few of them in incredulity. "Would you travel west with me?"

"It'll cost you," and Van could only grin back at him, though now he was trembling too. _I think Breda will decide this is madness. I also think she'll back Stef to the hilt._

"Your price?" he asked lightly.

"You tell me all about you again - but no leaving parts out this time."

"Hard bargain," he mused, and squeezed Stef's hands. "I will if you do the same."

"Aye. And you still play for me sometimes."

"As long as you sing for me," he pledged, and Stef leaned close to kiss him, murmuring his name.


End file.
